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THE 



SUNDAY-SCHOOL 

IDEA: 



AN EXPOSITION 

OF THE 

PRINCIPLES WHICH UNDERLIE THE SUNDAY- 
SCHOOL CAUSE, 

SETTING FORTH 

ITS OBJECTS, ORGANIZATION, METHODS AND 
CAPABILITIES. 



By JOHN S. HART, LL.D., 

Senior Editor of The Sunday-School Times, Principal of the New Jersey 
State Normal School, author of " Thoughts on Sabbath-Schools," " The 
Golden Censer," "Removing Mountains " "Mistakes of Edu- 
cated Men," "In the School Room," "Composition and 
Rhetoric" "English Grammar," etc., etc. 



V 
PHILADELPHIA : 

J. C. GARRIGUES & CO., 

No. 608 Arch Street. 
1870. 






"s.s\..'-\./~^ . 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, by 

J. C. GARRIGUES & CO., 
In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



Westcott & Thomson, 
Stereotypers, Philada. 



PREFACE. 



The intention of this book is to give a general survey of 
the whole subject of Sunday-schools. I have considered, 
first, the object of the institution, in its relations both to the 
individual scholar and to the great work of Christianizing 
the world. Next, the organization of the Sunday-school 
has come under review, and the true basis for such an or- 
ganization has been defined. After this, I have discussed 
at great length the varied duties and qualifications of the Su- 
perintendent and of the Teacher, — the men and women by 
whose labors and counsels the organization is to be carried 
on and made effectual. Besides the work to be done by 
these in their separate individual capacities, is that depend- 
ent upon concerted action, and this has led to a general re- 
view of the various associations of teachers, whether for 
their own improvement, or for the promotion of the cause 
at large. The important topic of Sunday-school literature 
has been discussed at considerable length, and suggestions 
have been made as to the best methods of selecting Sun- 

3 



4 PREFACE. 

day-school books and of managing the library. Sunday- 
school anniversaries, Sunday-school missions, the mode of 
starting a new school, the relations of the Sunday-school to 
the family, to the church and the minister, Teachers' In- 
stitutes, Teachers' Normal classes, with a large variety of 
other affiliated topics, have been passed under review. 

The subject having for many years engaged no small 
share of my thoughts, there is in fact hardly any aspect of 
it which has not, at one time or another, come up for prac- 
tical consideration. I have aimed accordingly in the pres- 
ent volume to give my whole rounded idea of what the 
Sunday-school is, and of what it is capable. I have aimed, 
however, to discuss principles rather than methods ; and in 
those instances in which particular methods have been ad- 
vocated, they have always been given in connection with 
the principles which underlie them and govern them. To 
the intelligent workman, here as elsewhere, the rationale 
of what he does is more important than the particular mode 
of doing it. Methods change or die out, principles are 
eternal. J. S. H. 

Trenton, N. J., October, 1870. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

OBJECTS OF THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL. 

PAGE 

i. The Great Object— Conversion of the Scholars. 14 

Building up the Converts in Holiness 15 

Instructing them in Bible Knowledge 16 

The Work before the Church 17 

Duty in regard to Religious Instruction 18 

What the Church must do 19 

Alarming Deficiencies 20 

2. The Mission Work of the Sunday-school Enter- 
prise 21 

The Aggressive Work 22 

More than Missionaries Needed 23 

Christianity essentially Aggressive 24 

Duty to those without 25 

Evangelization by means of the Sunday-school 26 

Duty of Churches as such 27 

The Sunday-school a Missionary Agency 29 

Supporting Missionaries 30 

Mission Work Everywhere 31 

CHAPTER II. 

SUNDAY-SCHOOL ORGANIZATION. 

Basis of Organization 35 

Appointment of Superintendent 37 

5 



6 CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Appointment of other Officers 40 

1. The Secretary 40 

2. The Librarian 41 

3. The Chorister 42 

Relation of Teachers to Superintendent 43 

CHAPTER III. 

THE SUPERINTENDENT. 

1. The First Qualification — Earnest Piety 50 

2. Executive Ability 52 

3. Things not Wanted 54 

1. Not Fussy 54 

2. Not Fretful 54 

3. Not Noisy 55 

4. Not a Talker 56 

4. Putting Forth a Personal Influence 57 

5. Knowing what is Going on in the School 61 

6. Knowledge of the Lesson 64 

7. Bestowing Attention upon all 66 

8. Sympathizing with all 67 

9. The Work of Classifying the School 69 

Principles of Classification 70 

1. Age 71 

2. Size 72 

3. Social Condition 74 

4. Intellectual Progress 75 

5. Individual Peculiarities 76 

10. Maintaining Order 78 

1. Doing Things Quietly 80 

2. Doing Things at the Right Time 83 

3. Keeping Things and Persons in Place 84 

1 1. Exercising Government 87 

12. Making a Programme 93 

13. Opening School Punctually 99 

14. Preparation for the Opening 100 



CONTENTS. 7 

PAGE 

15. Giving out Notices in School 101 

16. Giving out the Hymn * . . . . 103 

1. Waiting for the Scholars to Find the Place 103 

2. Care in Announcing the Place 104 

3. Grammatical Blunders 106 

4. Reading just what is to be Sung 106 

5. Giving the Key-note t 106 

6. Looking while Reading 107 

17. Reading the Scriptures 108 

1. Avoiding Formality 109 

2. Being in Earnest no 

3. Studying the Passage Ill 

4. Meditating over it 112 

5. Reading to One's Self 113 

6. Number of Verses to be Read 114 

7. Keeping the School in your Eye 114 

18. The Opening Prayer 115 

1. An Example 116 

2. Another Example 118 

3. The Superintendent's Manner in Prayer 1 19 

4. A Devout Pause before and after 120 

5. Concluding Remarks 121 

CHAPTER IV. 

THE ^TEACHER. 

1. The First Qualification 124 

2. Winning Souls 128 

3. Help from the Great Teacher 131 

4. Having an Aim 136 

1. To Secure Regularity of Attendance 138 

2. To Secure Study of the Lesson 138 

3. To Maintain Order 139 

4. To Teach Something 142 

5. To Teach Something Additional every Sunday 143 

6. To Teach Something to every Scholar 143 



8 CONTENTS. 



PAGE 



7. To make your Teaching Scriptural 145 

8. To get the Scholars to Commit to Memory 146 

9. To Secure the Conversion of your Scholars. 147 

5. Difference between Teaching in Sunday-school and in 

other Schools 149 

1. None of the Ordinary School Penalties 149 

2. The Subject of Instruction more Practical 150 

3. More Committing to Memory Required 152 

6. Class-Teaching 153 

7. How to Question a Class 157 

1. A Conviction that the Power is Attainable 158 

2. A Clear Idea of the Object of Questioning 159 

3. The Mode of Questioning 162 

a. The Teacher should not limit himself to the Book. 162 

b. He must be thoroughly at home in the Lesson.. 162 

c. He must make the Scholars give back all the 

ideas he gives them 163 

d. He must Skip about the Class 164 

8. How to Conduct a Recitation 165 

1. Closing the Books 165 

2. Reciting the Verses 166 

3. Finding the References 167 

4. Skipping about 168 

5. Keeping all the Class engaged 169 

6. Making the Scholars do the Talking 170 

9. Teaching out of Book 171 

10. Holding the Attention of a Class 177 

1 1. Keeping the Scholars busy 184 

12. Gaining the Affections of the Scholars 189 

13. Reaching the Comprehension of the Scholars 193 

14. Variety in Teaching ' 199 

1. In Manner 202 

2. In Topics 203 

3. In Illustrations 204 

4. Necessity of Freshness 205 

15. Assigning a Definite Lesson 206 



CONTENTS. 9 



PAGE 



16. Preparation for the Lesson 210 

1. Committing the Verses to Memory. 212 

2. The Parallel Texts 215 

3. Use of the Question-Book 215 

4. Finding Additional Illustrations 217 

5. Critical Study of Meaning 217 

6. Providing Practical Thoughts 219 

7. Beginning Early in the Week 220 

8. Seeking the Aid of the Great Teacher 220 

17. Getting the Scholars to Learn the Lesson 221 

18. Acquaintance with the general Contents of the Scriptures 229 

19. Irregular Attendance of Teachers 230 

20. Visiting Scholars 233 

21. Keeping up with the Times 237 

1. He should take a Teacher's Paper 239 

2. He should have a Teacher's Library 241 

3. He should attend Conventions 241 

CHAPTER V. 

TEACHERS IN COUNCIL. 

r. The Necessity of Social Gatherings 244 

2. State Conventions 248 

3. County Conventions 252 

4. County Institutes < 257 

Institute Programme 260 

5. Teachers' Weekly Meeting 265 

CHAPTER VI. 

THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL LIBRARY. 

Part I. — How to Selegt the Library. 

The Enormous Amount of Sunday-school Books 273 

Useless Lamentations not Recommended 275 

How shall the Selection be made ? 277 



io CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

A Reading Committee 279 

How is the Committee to be Appointed ? 280 

Who are fitted to be on the Committee 282 

1. Persons of Education and Culture 282 

2. Persons well acquainted with Christian Doctrine. . 282 

3. Persons having Sympathy with Children 283 

What Sort of Books should be Selected 284 

The Actual Selection , 286 

What Books are Unsuitable 288 

Part II. — How to Manage the Library. 

Difficulties in the Ordinary Methods. 292 

1. Books Disappear 292 

2. Inconveniences in the Manner of Selecting Books 

from the Library 293 

3. The Interruption to the Lessons caused by the usual 

Methods of Managing the Library. 296 

The Plan Proposed 298 

1. A Printed Catalogue to be used 299 

2. The Scholar's Library Card 300 

3. The Use of a Register Number 301 

4. The Selection of Books to be made at Home 302 

5. Returning Cards and Books 302 

6. Giving out Cards and Books 303 

7. Mode of Numbering the Books 303 

The Work of the Librarian 303 

1. The Use of the Checks 304 

2. The Use of the Register 305 

3. Recapitulation of the Librarian's Work 309 

CHAPTER VII., 

RELATIONS OF THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL TO OTHER RE- 
LIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS. 

1. The Sunday-school and the Church 310 

2. The Sunday-school and the Minister 318 



CONTENTS. II 

PAGE 

3. The Sunday-school and Parents 324 

4. Attendance of Scholars in Church 328 

5. School Accommodations 335 



CHAPTER VIII. 

MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 

1. Sunday-School Music 340 

1. Mere Noise not Song 342 

2. Mere Song not Sufficient 342 

3. The Music of the School should be such as will be 

Continued in the Church 343 

2. Sunday-school Anniversaries 346 

3. Closing Schools in Winter 355 

4. Closing Schools in Summer 359 

5. After Vacation 365 

6. Treatment of New Scholars ; 368 

7. Absenteeism 374 

8. Uniform Lessons 379 

9. How to Start a New School . . 385 

1. Seek Guidance from above 385 

2. Be Prepared to make Sacrifices 386 

3. Read on the Subject 387 

4. Study the Ground 387 

5. Get together your Fellow-workers 387 

6. Make a Family Visitation of the Neighborhood 389 

7. Secure a Place for holding the School 390 

8. The Cost of Starting a School 390 

9. Choice of Superintendent 392 

10. Opening the Meeting 392 

1 1. Classifying the Scholars 393 

12. Method of Classification 393 

13. The Teachers making themselves Acquainted with 

the Scholars. 394 

14. The Superintendent to have a Class 394 

15. The Secretary and Librarian not to have a Class 395 



12 CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

16. The First Session 395 

17. Constitution and By-laws 396 

10. Are we making Progress ? 396 

1. A Better Theory of the Object of the Sunday-school. 397 

2. The Relation of the Sunday-school to the Church 

better understood 398 

3. Greater Facilities in the way of Books, Maps, etc 399 

4. Improvement in Sunday-school Music 401 

5. Better Machinery for Improving the Character of the 

Schools 402 

6. Better Understanding of the Functions of the Sunday- 

School in Developing the Lay Talent of the Church 403 

7. A Hopeful Discontent with the Present State of 

Things 406 




THE 



SUNDAY-SCHOOL 



IDEA. 



CHAPTER I, 




THE OBJECTS OF THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL. 

j|N conducting any enterprise, it is important 
frequently to recur to first principles and to 
define clearly the objects for which the en- 
terprise is undertaken. In the excitement of pur- 
suit, it is not uncommon for men to forget what it 
is that they are pursuing, and to rush on from the 
mere love of the chase, regardless of the end. Few 
social agencies are more useful than the fire com- 
panies of our cities. Yet how frequently do we see 
more property destroyed by the exuberant and heed- 
less energy of an excited fire company than by the 
fire itself! 

I do not mean to compare the Sunday-school or- 
ganization to the Fire Department. Yet Sunday- 
2 13 



14 OBJECTS OF THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL. 

school teachers, equally with firemen, need to have 
clear ideas of what it is that they are called to do. 
The teacher, equally with the fireman, for the want 
of definite aims may beat the air, or may even do 
harm where he seeks to do good. 

What then is the aim of the Sunday-school ? 

The First and Great Object, 

The first, great aim, undoubtedly, is to bring the 
scholars to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ — to 
secure their conversion. The teacher should aim at 
this just as steadily and fixedly as the fireman aims, 
above and before all other considerations, to save the 
life of a forgotten sleeper from the flames of a blazing 
dwelling. To the accomplishment of this his first 
end, all other ends are to the teacher subordinate and 
secondary. Until the accomplishment of this, all 
other results are nugatory. For this he labors, stud- 
ies, visits, prays, agonizes. The burden of his 
thoughts and desires is, How shall I compass the 
conversion of my pupils ? This, beyond all question, 
is the first and main end of the Sunday-school. The 
institution is not a missionary society, or a tempe- 
rance society, or an anti-tobacco society, or a debat- 
ing society, or a school for teaching history, geogra- 
phy, literature and antiquities, but a school to do for 
the young what the church is doing — to bring them 
to the knowledge of Christ. Nor is it an institution 
above, or below, or outside of, or in any way 
antagonistic to the church, but rather it is a particu- 



OBJECTS OF THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL. 15 

lar mode in which the church itself is carrying out 
the behests of its Lord. 

Building up Converts in Holiness. The church, 
while aiming primarily at the conversion of souls, 
does not stop at this naked result. When a soul is 
converted to God, the church does not then give up 
all care for it, and leave it to struggle on in its new 
career unaided and alone. As well almost might the 
mother abandon her new-born babe, and give her 
energies forthwith to other cares. The soul that is 
new-born into the kingdom needs continual watch- 
fulness and fostering care. This is especially true of 
those regenerated in early youth. The tenderer the 
years at which they are converted, the greater the 
care and watchfulness required after their conversion. 
A teacher whose labors should be blessed by the con- 
version of all the members of his class would be 
strangely derelict in duty were he then to abandon 
his class as no longer needing his care, and go off in 
search of other scholars to be converted. Christ is 
glorified not only by the conversion of souls, but by 
their steadfastness in the faith and their growth in 
holiness. If a child, after being truly converted, is 
left to go astray and fall into sin, and to become 
through life a weak and puny Christian, though he 
may be finally saved, he yet misses much of the glory 
and brightness of the Christian life, and he brings 
much dishonor upon the cause. 

We must aim, then, not only to bring the lambs 
into the fold, but to keep them there, and to give 



16 OBJECTS OF THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL. 

them due nurture and protection. The Sunday- 
school is an agency of the -church specially suited to 
do this part of the Christian work. The young 
Christian needs to be thoroughly grounded in doc- 
trine. When a scholar is converted and joins the 
church, our work with him is just begun. We must 
patiently and faithfully teach him the doctrines of 
the Bible. The truths of the Holy Scriptures are 
the aliment by which the Christian grows. What 
the young disciple especially needs is, not only ex- 
hortation, but teaching. The pastor who is wise 
will spend much time in simple, instructive dis- 
courses, having for their aim to build up the young 
of his flock in sound Christian knowledge, and he 
will regard with peculiar satisfaction those of his 
helpers and fellow-laborers who in the Sunday- 
school carry out in detail, and apply to personal and 
individual cases, the portions of doctrine which he 
from the pulpit distributes in the mass and to the 
whole congregation. 

Instruction in Bible Knowledge. Nor should 
the teacher wait until a child is converted before be- 
ginning to instruct him in the truths of the Bible and 
the duties of the Christian life. The doctrines of 
the Bible, it should be remembered, are not only 
useful for growth in grace, but they are the most 
efficient means of conversion. While the teacher 
should not neglect the duty of personal appeal and 
exhortation, yet let him not forget that there is a 
mighty power in God's word to pierce the heart and 



OBJECTS OF THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL. 1 7 

conscience. Let him unceasingly plant this divine 
seed in the minds of his scholars. It may lie long 
before it is quickened. But in time it will take root 
and grow. The work of grace in a heart thus 
thoroughly indoctrinated in Scripture truth is much 
more glorious than that fitful excitement sometimes 
wrought by mere passionate appeals to the feelings. 

The great aim of the Sunday-school, then, is the 
conversion of the young and the building up of its 
converts in holiness of heart and life, and its great 
means are the indoctrination of the young, both be- 
fore and after conversion, in the truths of the Bible. 

But this is confining our views to a single school. 
Let us endeavor to look beyond this single point, and 
get a view of the Sunday-school enterprise in its 
broader and more general aspects. 

The Work Before us. 

It is for Christians to Christianize the world. This 
is among the plainest postulates of the gospel scheme. 
Another truth equally fundamental is that education 
is the main agency to be used in the work of Chris- 
tianization. Children believe what they are taught 
to believe. They are what they are trained to be. 
After all necessary deductions and abatements for 
individual cases, this is the great fact in human his- 
tory. As the twig is bent the tree is inclined. Teach- 
ing and training make the man. Teaching and 
training make the nation. There are no means more 
used and blessed by the Holy Spirit in the work of 
2* . B 



l8 OBJECTS OF THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL. 

turning men to Christ and of establishing his king- 
dom in the world than this of education. The 
church itself is only the school of Christ, in which all 
are alternately scholars and teachers, ever learning 
and teaching the truths which Christ has promul- 
gated for the salvation of the world. 

Duty of the Church to give Religious Teaching 
to the Toung. The Sunday-school is not an insti- 
tution by itself, having an independent existence and 
organization of its own, but is only the church work- 
ing in that particular way while carrying out its 
appointed mission of evangelizing the world. The 
duty of giving a Christian education to the young has 
been laid upon the church by the Master, and this 
duty, it has been found, can best be discharged by 
means of the Sunday-school. Children may indeed 
be taught the doctrines and precepts of the Bible 
privately at home by their parents or by others spe- 
cially employed for the purpose. The same is true 
of all parts of a child's education. He may be taught 
the languages and the various sciences at home by 
his parents or by private tutors. Many persons pre- 
fer this method of education. But it is easy to see 
that not one in a thousand, perhaps not one in ten 
thousand, has the means to educate his children in 
this way. Few parents have themselves the educa- 
tion or the leisure to discharge the duty personally, 
and still fewer have the wealth to enable them to 
employ a private tutor. Religious teaching is no 
exception to this remark. It would be a sad day for 



OBJECTS OF THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL. 19 

the church and for the world if no children were to 
receive religious teaching and training but those who 
had educated and godly parents able and willing to 
do the work. To the mass of mankind, the ninety and 
nine out of the hundred, knowledge comes by school- 
ing. The young learn the doctrines and precepts of 
the Bible most readily and effectually, just as they 
learn most readily the rules of arithmetic and gram- 
mar — namely : by going to school for the purpose, 
by making a business of it. Any other method is 
apt to be fitful, irregular and inadequate. If the 
great body of children in the community are to be 
instructed systematically and effectually in the doc- 
trines of the Christian religion, and if this instruction 
cannot conveniently be given in the week-day school, 
then we must have a school especially for the purpose 
on Sunday, and this Sunday-school must be made as 
efficient as the talent, the education, the wealth and 
the fidelity of the church to her Master can make 

it. 

What the Church must do. 

The church must aim, first, to bring into the school 
all the children in her borders who are of school age, 
and secondly, to give to the school the very highest 
efficiency of which it is capable. The church is not 
acting up to the exigencies of the case until it is 
found willing to expend upon this work an amount 
of energy and liberality commensurate with that 
which the State spends upon secular education. 
The city of New York alone spends annually upon 



20 OBJECTS OF THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL. 

her daily public-schools more money than is ex- 
pended by all the Christians of the United States on 
Sunday-schools. So long as such a state of things 
exists, so long as the Sunday-school is sustained in 
this feeble, half-hearted way, let croakers and unbe- 
lievers cease to wail over its failings and short-com- 
ings. The Sunday-school is not accomplishing what 
it ought to accomplish. Nobody knows this more 
fully, nobody bewails it more truly, than I do. But 
I also as truly and fully believe that the Sunday- 
school may be all that is claimed for it, that it may 
accomplish all that is legitimately required of it, that 
it may teach its pupils the doctrines of religion and 
train them in habits of piety, just as thoroughly as 
these same children on the other days of the week 
are taught and trained in the daily schools how to 
read, write and spell. But to do this the church 
of course must use adequate means and must go 
about the work in good earnest. 

Alarming Deficiencies. There is no disguising 
the fact that fully one-half the juvenile population of 
the community is out of the Sunday-school, and of 
this half all except the most inconsiderable fraction 
are outside of religious instruction and influence. 
The good people who go to church and to Sunday- 
school themselves, and who see with their own eyes 
the crowds of others who attend the church and the 
school, can hardly be made to believe the portentous 
fact which I have named. If they might with pro- 
priety on a Sunday morning, instead of going to 



OBJECTS OF THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL, 21 

church, take a stroll in the fields in the neighborhood 
of the village or town, and see the hundreds of idle 
boys and young men on almost every open lot en- 
gaged in the so-called sport of base ball, which has 
become such a national mania, they might perhaps 
realize a little better the startling facts revealed by 
the census. Is the church doing anything in refer- 
ence to this evil at all commensurate with its gigan- 
tic character? 

The Mission Work of the Sunday-school Enter- 
prise. 

The Sunday-school work of the country is clearly 
divisible into tw T o heads. The first contemplates the 
perfecting of the schools which exist, particularly 
of those which are connected with old and w T ell- 
established churches. This undoubtedly is a great 
work. Of the more than one hundred thousand 
existing schools, how few are accomplishing all that 
they might accomplish ! What a power to the 
church this agency would be if its machinery were 
all complete and thoroughly efficient ! If our Sun- 
day-schools had even the efficiency and the com- 
pleteness of our week-day schools, though the latter 
are far from being models, what an impulse would 
be given to the healthful life and activity of the 
church, and to the growth of godliness among men ! 
Most assuredly, the perfecting of our existing schools 
is one great department of the Sunday-school work 
in this country. 



22 OBJECTS OF THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL. 

The Aggressive Work. But the aggressive work 
of the Sunday-school enterprise is still greater and 
more important. If the four millions or more of 
children who attend the Sunday-school are very im- 
perfectly taught, and receive comparatively little 
benefit, let it not be forgotten that not less than five 
millions attend no school, and are entirely without 
the means of religious instruction. The very poorest 
school that was ever kept together is better than no 
school. The child who attends most irregularly, and 
has a teacher of the very smallest qualifications, is 
better off than the child who goes to no school and 
spends his Sunday in roaming through the streets or 
the fields. Every well-conducted inquiry develops 
almost uniformly the fact that more than one-half 
of the youth of the land are growing up in ignorance 
of God and of Bible truth, attending neither school 
nor church, many of them unable to read, and even 
these, by reason of the vicious and depraving litera- 
ture with which young minds are poisoned, being for 
the most part better off than those who can read. 

This, then, is the aggressive work of the Sunday- 
school enterprise. The people of God have in hand 
the invasion of this vast outlying mass of neglected 
ignorance and vice. They aim at nothing less than 
to bring into the Sunday-school, and under religious 
influence, every child who is willing, or can be per- 
suaded, to come. The Sunday-school has become a 
leading agency by which the church seeks to fulfil 
its mission of evangelizing the entire population. It 



OBJECTS OF THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL. 23 

is in the fullest sense of the word a missionary enter- 
prise. It is a work in which every Christian who 
is in bodily health may give personal service. Not 
every one can personally preach Christ to the 
heathen. The most of us must content ourselves 
with giving our money to send others. But in 
bringing neglected children into the Sunday-school, 
almost the entire body of Christians can engage per- 
sonally. It is a work which can be adequately 
accomplished in no other way than by the personal 
service of the great body of Christians. 

More than Missionaries Needed. A few city 
missionaries scattered here and there, a few scores 
or even hundreds of missionaries in the West, cannot 
accomplish this work. The work is too great, too 
pervading, too widespread, to be effectually reached 
by any mere partial, or local, or transient effort. 
We must have, indeed, our city missionaries and 
our Western missionaries, and we must multiply them 
twenty-fold. But these, however multiplied, cannot 
do the work. As well might a few gardeners, with 
their watering-pots, undertake to supply the summer 
rain. The great work of Christian evangelization 
must be done by the great mass of God's people. 
To bring into the Sunday-school five millions of 
neglected children can be done only by the general 
co-operation of the six millions of professing Christ- 
ians. It is a work for all. It is a work for every 
one. Deducting one-sixth for those physically dis- 
abled by ill health and the infirmities of age, there 



24 OBJECTS OF THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL. 

would still be left one professing Christian for every 
neglected child. What Christian loves his Lord so 
little, or is so poor in resources, that he cannot, by- 
inquiry and persuasion and personal effort, in the 
course of a year, or of two years, or three years, 
bring one child into the Sunday-school? What 
church that will undertake this matter seriously and 
systematically cannot, in one, two, or three years, 
bring into the Sunday-school as many neglected 
children as it has church members? What Chris- 
tian, what church, has not within reach neglected 
children on whom to operate ? We need not go to 
Bedford street, or to the Five Points, or to the far 
West, to find children that go to no Sunday-school. 
They are all around us, within stone's throw of our 
dwellings, living in the next street, perhaps in the 
next house. We meet them every time we go to our 
places of business. We see them on every street 
corner. We can hardly avoid them if we would. 

Here, then, is the aggressive work in which we 
are engaged. The six millions of American Chris- 
tians must, not by gifts of money, not by sending 
substitutes, but by personal service, bring into the 
Sunday-school and under religious influence the 
five millions of neglected children among us who are 
growing up in practical heathenism. 

Christianity Aggressive. 

Christianity is essentially aggressive. The man 
who is a true Christian himself desires to see all 



OBJECTS OF THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL. 25 

other men Christians. To this he looks, for this he 
labors and prays. "Thy kingdom come" is the 
burden of his prayer. To speed its coming is the 
object of his labor and effort. It is not in the nature 
of the case that he should be indifferent to this 
object. Neutrality in the case is not possible. Our 
Saviour himself expressly says, " He that is not with 
me is against me." Christianity is not like a scheme 
of philosophy, or a dogma of science, which a man 
may receive as his own belief, with unconcern as to 
what others believe about it. If a man believes 
Christianity to be true, he must needs be anxious 
that others should have the same faith. He is, by 
his very nature as well as by his profession, a prop- 
agandist. The church is an organization for this 
very purpose, to spread the doctrine it has received. 
The church has been planted in the world, not for 
the purposes of self-defence, but for aggression. It 
aims at no less than to bring all men within its pale. 
Duty to Those Without. If such be the nature 
of Christianity, and such the office of a Christian 
church, what should we expect in any community 
in which a number of churches are planted ? Should 
these churches be contented w T ith merely holding 
their own ? — with merely taking care each of its own 
flock? Surely not. Every church should consider 
itself bound to make aggressions, not into its neigh- 
bor's fold, but into the territory not yet reclaimed 
from the enemy. There are few communities in 
which at least one-third of the population is not out- 
3 



26 OBJECTS OF THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL. 

side of any church. In the United States, the pro- 
portion of those who attend no* church, and who are 
openly of the number of the ungodly, is reckoned at 
one-half the population. This may possibly be an 
exaggeration. There may- be particular communi- 
ties in which the number of those who are outside 
of religious influences and connections is far less. 
Yet I have never known a community stirred up to 
make a thorough exploration of this subject who 
did not find the facts far more deplorable and alarm- 
ing than they had imagined. The number of those 
w r ho in this Christian land live and die as heathens, 
if not one-half of the entire population, is appallingly 
large. The Christian church has a work to do in 
regard to this element of society, which it must look 
steadily in the face, neither disheartened by the 
magnitude of the evil, nor on the other hand ignor- 
ing its existence. 

It is a dreadful mistake for a church to content 
itself with merely looking after the families con- 
nected with its own organization. This undoubtedly 
it should do. But there are other things which it 
should not leave undone. No church is true to its 
Master that is not continually and systematically 
making inroads upon the kingdom of Satan. 

Eva7tgelization by means of, the Sunday-school. 
It has so come to pass in the providence of God, that 
much of the work of evangelizing the mass of the 
people, both within and without the pale of the 
church, is now accomplished by means of the Sun- 



OBJECTS OF THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL. 27 

day-school. Whatever, therefore, this institution 
may have been in its origin, it is now clearly a 
church institution — a part of the church, not a sanc- 
tuary outside of the church. It is one of the modes 
by which the church is doing the work assigned to 
her by her Lord. The Methodist Church moved in 
the right direction in the changes adopted a few 
years since in their Book of Discipline, in which the 
Sunday-school was formally incorporated as a part 
of the working machinery of the church, and as such 
subject to ecclesiastical supervision and control. I 
have long thought the institution one too important 
to be left to mere voluntary guidance and support. I 
hope the day is not distant when every ecclesiastical 
body will not only assume the charge of its Sunday- 
schools, but will give them that efficient and system- 
atic support accorded to other acknowledged agen- 
cies of the church. 

Duty of Churches as such. But there is a step 
beyond this even which our churches must take. 
They should not only look after the children of their 
own flocks, seeing that they are brought into the 
school, and that they are duly cared for and in- 
structed, but they should systematically and with or- 
ganized effort go out into the byways and bring in the 
neglected ones. Every conference, synod, convention, 
presbytery, classis, or church judicatory, having 
control in matters of* discipline, should enjoin upon 
its members the duty of gathering into its Sunday- 
schools the children who have no church connection. 



28 OBJECTS OF THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL. 

Much has been done in this way by voluntary associ- 
ations of teachers, who have organized themselves 
into visiting committees for the purpose of visiting 
every family. But such associations are transient, 
and more or less spasmodic. Churches are perma- 
nent. They are the proper agency for aggressive 
work, as well as for the work within their own con- 
gregation. When every church shall have fully 
organized and equipped itself for this work, and 
shall have entered upon it with earnest zeal, and 
shall have reaped an abundant harvest as the fruit of 
its labors, there will still remain " much land to be 
possessed." There is enough for all to do. Let all 
engage in doing. 

If a church may be interrogated by its supervisory 
body as to its faithfulness in regard to the children 
of its members and of the families worshipping with 
it, why should it not be interrogated also as to its 
faithfulness to those " which are without ?" If a 
church may assign to some of its members the duty 
of superintending and teaching in the Sunday-school, 
and of seeing that the children of its households are 
properly instructed either in the Sunday-school or 
elsewhere, why may it not also organize a stated and 
responsible machinery for bringing into the school 
and the congregation children and families that have 
no religious connection ? 

" Not to Leave the Other Undone" The cur- 
rent of thought among Sunday-school teachers all 
over the land at this time is strongly set upon im- 



OBJECTS OF THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL* 29 

proving the methods of teaching. On this branch 
of the subject I shall have much to say in the 
present volume. The greater part of my volume, 
indeed, will be devoted to this point. But there is 
another aspect of the case that is equally important, 
and that is for the time in some danger of being 
forgotten. 

A Missionary Agency. The Sunday-school is 
of incalculable importance as a missionary agency of 
the church. As a means of reaching the destitute, 
those lying outside the pale of the churches, there is 
no agency comparable to it for efficiency, none that 
can supply its place. The improvements in teaching 
and training, and in the general management of 
schools, upon which the minds of Sunday-school 
men are now set, will contribute doubtless to the 
effectiveness of the institution as a missionary agency ; 
for the better and more attractive we can make our 
existing schools the more readily can we propagate 
and multiply them. But the mission work of the 
Sunday-school is, after all, something distinct, having 
motives, methods and agencies of its own, and is of 
primary and most urgent importance. The danger 
of the hour seems to me to be that this great work 
will unintentionally and unconsciously be made sec- 
ondary in the thoughts and efforts of God's people ; 
and I take the occasion, therefore, in the very thresh- 
old of my book, to emphasize this feature of the 
Sunday-school enterprise. 

More than half the Children out of Sunday- 
3* 



30 OBJECTS OF THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL. 

school. The broad, patent, acknowledged fact which 
the church is called on to consider is that there, in 
our own land, more children are outside the Sunday- 
school than inside, and with all our efforts thus far 
we have not perceptibly reduced the proportion of 
those who are growing up godless and unchristian. 
Must these things be ? 

The duty of every Christian church and of every 
Christian in this matter is easily divisible into two 
heads. First, we owe something to the neglected 
children in our immediate neighborhood — those with- 
in reach of our own homes and churches, in the lanes 
and streets and alleys all around us. Secondly, we 
owe a duty to those living in sparsely-settled regions 
in the interior of the old States and in the ever ad- 
vancing borders of the new States, where churches 
and Christian institutions are not yet fully enjoyed. 

Supporting Missionaries. The duties of this 
second class cannot be discharged in most cases by 
personal service. We cannot go, but we may send. 
We must give of our worldly substance to those who 
are willing to act as missionaries in this work of 
planting Sunday-schools in pioneer regions. We 
should give a cordial and liberal support to those 
societies and agencies which have this work in hand. 
There is one society especially, national in its charac- 
ter and name, catholic in its principles, and vener- 
able in its history and associations, which should 
share largely in the sympathies and the liberality of 
all Protestant Christians. I refer to the American 



OBJECTS OF THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL. 3 1 

Sunday-School Union. As a Society, it has facili- 
ties for missionary work in pioneer regions such as 
no other benevolent agency has with which I am 
acquainted. It has, too, a noble record in the past, 
and I hope a glorious work in the future. I bid it 
most sincerely God-speed. I commend its mission- 
aries and its work to the confidence, the prayers, the 
sympathies and the liberality of God's people. The 
Society should have ten missionaries in the field 
where it now has one. It should receive hundreds 
of dollars where it now receives ten. As a mission- 
ary agency its necessity was never so great, its 
opportunities were never so ample, its wants never 
more urgent. As a missionary agency it is compar- 
atively inexpensive. The entire support of one of 
its missionaries is within the means of many a single 
school. There are at least five hundred Sunday- 
schools in our great centres of population, each of 
which might have its missionary, and every such 
missionary might gather in one new school on an 
average every week in the year. Could there be a 
more blessed privilege, a more imperative duty? 

Mission Work Everywhere. But there is a vast 
amount of missionary work to be done that requires 
no intervention of any society, national, State or 
county. Every school, every church, every man, 
woman, or child, that loves the Lord Jesus, has mis- 
sionary ground always within reach. Wherever 
there is a child whose religious interests are not 
cared for, who is growing up without a knowledge 



32 OBJECTS OF THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL. 

of God and the way of salvation, there is missionary- 
work to be done. The strong, well-ordered, pros- 
perous schools should count it a part of their indis- 
pensable duty, not only to aid in sending mission- 
aries to remote settlements, but to engage personally 
in mission work in their own immediate neighbor- 
hoods. 

A school connected with one of our large city 
congregations ought to place these three objects 
before it : First, to bring into itself, among its own 
classes, a continual stream of that class of children 
known as mission scholars, consisting of such as live 
near enough to attend the mother church. Secondly, 
to maintain one or more outlying mission-schools for 
such children as live too far from the church to 
attend there. Mission stations like this exist to 
almost any extent in our towns and cities. Thirdly, 
to maintain a missionary of its own on some distant 
field, using for this purpose the agency of some 
society. 

A large school of this kind is not thoroughly organ- 
ized for its work unless it has, in addition to its 
teachers, librarians, etc., a goodly number of labor- 
ers whose business should be to go out regularly 
every Sunday looking after children. When the 
teachers go to the school, let -these visitors go into 
the streets. Let the work be a stated one, just as 
much as that of teaching, and let it occupy as much 
time. A school that has twenty teachers ought to 
have at least five of these child-hunters. Such an 



OBJECTS OF THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL. 33 

arrangement would enable the superintendent and 
pastor to utilize a large amount of talent that is now 
resting unemployed. Many pious persons might 
profitably engage in this. service, and would be glad 
to do so, who have not the qualifications for teaching. 
What an impulse it would give to all our schools if 
tor every four or five teachers one voluntary mission- 
ary visitor of this sort were engaged every Sunday, 
all the time of the session of the school, in exploring 
the streets and alleys for neglected children ! 

C 




CHAPTER II. 



5 UN DA T-SCHO OL OR GANIZA TIOJV. 




N the remarks which I am about to make I 
refer, not to the institution as a general or 
national concern, but to a particular school. 
How shall a Sunday-school be organized? What 
ideas enter into such an organization ? What officers 
are needed for its full efficiency ? 

In sketching such an organization, I have in 
mind the school of a large, well-appointed city 
church, a school numbering from two to three hun- 
dred scholars. Many modifications would be needed, 
of course, in organizing a city mission-school, or a 
small country school. 

I would enter, also, one other important caveat. 
However decided may be my opinion in regard to 
the best method of Sunday-school management, or 
the true theory on which Sunday-school organiza- 
tions should be based, yet if in any particular case I 
found an old, well-established school in successful 
operation conducted on some other plan, I should 
think it eminently unwise to disturb such organiza- 
tion just for the sake of realizing a theory. But 
34 



SUNDAY-SCHOOL ORGANIZATION. 35 

every year scores of new schools are coming into 
life, and there are also hundreds of old schools in a 
disordered, enfeebled condition, requiring reorgani- 
zation. In all these cases the way is open for exper- 
iment, and one may enter the work with a reasonably 
fair chance of carrying out a preconceived plan with- 
out material or vexatious obstructions. 

Basis of Organization. 

The first question to be settled is, What is the true 
basis of the Sunday-school? Is it an independent, 
self-originating institution, like a Temperance Society, 
or a Society for Preventing Cruelty to Animals, or is 
it an offspring of the church ? — a part of the machin- 
ery and working of the church ? The answer given 
to this question will determine many others — most 
others, indeed, relating to the management of the 
school, and therefore it should take precedence of 
other questions. There is a tendency in many quar- 
ters to feel and act, if not distinctly to say, that the 
Sunday-school is something distinct and apart — an 
institution by itself. This notion, I am happy to 
believe, is not as prevalent as it was ten years ago. 
It still exists, however, and wherever it does exist it 
exerts a controlling influence in shaping affairs. 

For myself, I have no sort of sympathy with any 
such feeling or notion. The Sunday-school, accord- 
ing to my theory, is "a part of the working of the 
church, as much so as the. prayer-meeting, or the 
weekly lecture, or even the Sunday sermon is. It is 



3°* SUNDAY-SCHOOL ORGANIZATION. 

one of the ways in which the church shows its life. 
The religious training of the young is an imperative 
duty of the church, which it can neither ignore nor 
delegate. The instruction of youth in the principles 
of the gospel is one of the leading means by which 
God's people are to fulfill their great mission of 
Christianizing the w T orld. It is therefore the duty 
and the interest of every Christian church, first to 
diffuse and foster among its households a disposition 
to train their children in the knowledge of the Scrip- 
tures, and secondly to supplement this family train- 
ing by organizing and supporting a school wherein 
the Scriptures and the symbols of the church may 
be studied in some systematic and orderly manner. 
The school, according to this idea, is not something 
outside, springing up of itself, and coming in as a 
co-ordinate and collateral influence. It is rather, or 
at least it should be, the direct offspring and child of 
the church. 

Holding this view of the subject, I am at no loss 
to determine what shall be the fountain of authority 
in the school. If a school is in a healthy condition, 
its teachers filled with zeal for the regeneration and 
conversion of their scholars, questions of authority 
and power and precedence will rarely arise. Still, 
in every organization where human beings work 
together, there must be a recognized centre and a 
recognized source of authority and control. The 
superintendent is the centre of control and authority 
in the Sunday-school. That is agreed on all hands. 



SUNDAY-SCHOOL ORGANIZATION. 37 

But who clothes him with this authority? Whence 
does it spring as its source? Who appoint him and 
remove him? 

Appointment of Superintendent, 

" Why, the superintendent is elected by the teach- 
ers," says the reader ; " how else should he be 
elected ?" 

That is just where we differ. The school, accord- 
ing to my notion, is not a little republic, or a ward 
meeting, or an arena for exercising the suffrage, but 
a place for work under the direction of the consti- 
tuted authorities of the church. The church has a 
work to do, and they appoint a man to manage it 
for them, just as a railroad corporation appoint an 
engineer or a conductor. The teachers of a public 
school do not elect their principal ; why should the 
teachers of a Sunday-school do so ? / 

The opinions of nearly all Sunday-school teachers, 
and the customs of nearly all Sunday-schools, I 
know, are against me in this matter ; and yet I am 
persuaded the common mode of proceeding has 
grown up by chance and through indifference, rather 
than from any well-considered theory on the subject, 
and I have good reason to believe that the method 
which I advocate is steadily and surely gaining 
ground. It needs but a sober and unprejudiced con- 
sideration to become general. 

There are two ways of killing all life out of a 
school. One is to load it down with a complex 
4 



38 SUNDAY-SCHOOL ORGANIZATION. 

machinery of laws and by-laws — to " constitution" it 
to death. The other is to make its offices a bone of 
electioneering contention. When this sort of feeling 
creeps into a school, it might as well close its doors ; 
and how can this feeling be excluded when the posi- 
tion of superintendent is held up as a prize to be 
scrambled for, and the aspirant feels that he must 
cater for votes ? 

The simplest, the safest, the most effective way of 
organizing a school is for the session, or the vestry, 
or whatever body constitutes the government of the 
church, to select their man and say to him : Here 
is a work which w T e want you to manage for us and 
for the Master. Look through the congregation and 
select your instruments. Invite one to teach, another 
to be secretary, another to be librarian, and so on. 
We wish the school conducted on certain principles, 
but we leave the details of administration and the 
selection of the instruments to yourself. When you 
have your corps of teachers and assistants selected, 
you w T ill, of course, as every wise administrator does, 
confer with them freely and kindly, and be thankful 
for advice and suggestion ; but remember that you 
are the overseer of the flock, and to you we look for 
results. 

In other words, the superintendent represents the 
session, or whatever body, according to the usage 
of the particular church, constitutes its governing 
authority. The superintendent is appointed by the 
church, to do a work for the church, under instruc- 



SUNDAY-SCHOOL ORGANIZATION, 39 

tions from the church. Instead of being elected by 
the teachers, he invites the teachers to be his helpers 
in the work assigned him. 

As I said before, where a school is already well 
established and in successful operation, and has 
been organized on the other plan, I would not break 
up the existing arrangements for the mere sake of 
theory. But where a new school is to be estab- 
lished, or an old one is to be revived or reconstructed, 
I would ask those interested to consider seriously 
and candidly the position which I have taken. 

The character, almost the life, of the school de- 
pends on the superintendent. This is admitted on 
all hands. Are there not grave reasons why he 
should not be subject to an annual election by the 
teachers ? or to an election by them at all ? Suppose 
the superintendent, through some infirmity of temper, 
or want of tact, or lack of executive ability, is not 
succeeding, is it not likely that a change of adminis- 
tration can be effected with more discretion and with 
less friction, with greater quietness and at the same 
time with greater firmness, in the manner which I 
have indicated, than by the exasperating publicity of 
a popular vote ? Many a school drags out a feeble 
and sickly existence for years just because the teach- 
ers wish to avoid a scene. They feel naturally timid 
about turning out an incompetent superintendent. 
Surely such things can be managed better by a few 
wise heads, having competent authority, than by 
electioneering intrigues. 



40 SUNDAT-SCHOOL ORGANIZATION. 

This, then, is the first point in the organization 
of a Sunday-school ; namely, the appointment of the 
superintendent. But suppose a superintendent ap- 
pointed, what officers or assistants does he need in 
carrying on the work? 

Othe. Officers. 

I. A Secretary. Many superintendents perform 
the duty of secretary themselves. If the school is very 
small, and no suitable person can be obtained for the 
purpose, the superintendent may have to do this 
work. But I am not now speaking of such schools, 
or of such extreme cases. In the great majority of 
cases, where there is no secretary to keep the records 
of the school, it is because the superintendent is an 
immethodical man, with loose habits of business, 
and does not see the importance of a systematic and 
careful record of what is done in the school. Clear 
and correct minutes of attendance and of proceedings 
add greatly to the efficiency of the school, and are as 
important to it as to other kinds of business. Such 
minutes, if full and accurate, help not only to meas- 
ure progress, but to guide in deciding practical 
questions. But to be of any use they ought to be 
made with care and neatness, and from actual ob- 
servation on the spot. If the school is a large one, 
collecting the facts which ought to be registered and 
reducing them to record is work enough to occupy 
the time of one person during the whole session of 
the school. The superintendent's time in school is 



SUNDAY-SCHOOL ORGANIZATION. 41 

too valuable, and is too much needed for other pur- 
poses, to be occupied with these details. In almost 
every congregation there is some young man of 
quiet, gentlemanly habits, accustomed to business, 
perhaps a clerk or accountant in a mercantile firm, 
who, though not a member of church, and not will- 
ing or perhaps not suited to act as a teacher, yet 
feels an interest in the school, and would take a 
pleasure in thus making his good penmanship and 
his business habits contribute to the promotion of the 
cause. One of the special benefits of the Sunday- 
school work is that it gives employment to much 
precious talent that would otherwise go to waste. 
Every young man that can be utilized by occupa- 
tions like these is so much positive gain. The 
superintendent, in selecting his secretary, ought to 
have an eye to this, so as not only to secure a valu- 
able assistant, but to bring into the field of usefulness 
one who would otherwise be standing idle. 

2. A Librarian. The qualities needed in the 
librarian are very similar to those required in the 
secretary. One is needed who is a good penman 
and a good accountant, trained to method and to 
habits of business ; one who is quiet, patient, con- 
siderate and careful ; one who is not a mere routinist, 
but who has some fertility of invention, so as to find 
out ways of collecting and distributing books with- 
out distracting the teachers in the work of teaching, 
and so as to secure the books from being destroyed 
and lost. The librarian, in a school of any size, 

4* 



42 SUNDAY-SCHOOL ORGANIZATION. 

needs at least two assistants, one for the boys' classes 
and one for the girls' classes. A third assistant is 
needed for the infant class. In very large schools as 
many as four or five assistants are needed. There is 
rarely any error in employing too much assistance 
in the work of the library. The common error is in 
the other direction. The library gives an oppor- 
tunity of retaining in the school many of the young 
men of the church, and turning to good account 
their talents for business. 

3. A Chorister. This office is not an indispens- 
able one, like the two others which have been 
named. But wherever it is practicable, it adds much 
to the effectiveness of the music in the school to have 
some competent person whose recognized business 
it is to lead the children in the singing. Often the 
church chorister performs this office for the school. 
More commonly it is one of the teachers. The 
office is not incompatible with that of teacher, as the 
office of librarian or of secretary is. It is important, 
however, that the singing should not be left at loose 
ends, as it often is, but that some one of good judg- 
ment and competent musical talent should be charged 
with the duty of attending to the music. It needs 
some one, not merely to raise the tune when the 
time for singing comes, but to. study the matter and 
devise the ways and means of improving the music. 
Sunday-school music has become a great power. 
But in order to the full development and the wise 
exercise of this power, there is needed a competent 



SUNDAY-SCHOOL ORGANIZATION. 43 

knowledge of the subject, invention, tact, sound 
judgment, and no small amount of labor and thought 
outside of the school. The superintendent who is 
able to summon to his aid an assistant of this kind 
adds thereby largely to the effectiveness of all his 
other operations. Good music in the Sunday-school 
operates like the breath of the south wind in spring- 
time upon a bank of flowers — sending a pleasant 
warmth and glow to all the genial forces of nature. 

4. Teachers. I shall have occasion, farther on 
in this volume, to go into a good deal of detail in 
regard to the duties and qualifications of teachers. 
The only point now to be considered is the relation 
of the teachers to the superintendent. 

The general idea which, according to my view, 
lies at the basis of the whole Sunday-school organ- 
ization, must be our guide here. The pastor, the 
rector, the session, the vestry — whatever man or 
men constitute the ordinary authority of the church 
— appoint the superintendent, or invite him to carry 
out their views in organizing and conducting a Sun- 
day-school. The superintendent in like manner 
invites such persons in the congregation as he deems 
fit to be his helpers in this work. The teachers are 
assistants to the superintendent, acting in co-opera- 
tion with him, under his advice and direction, by 
his invitation. 

In other words, so far as there is an election, the 
superintendent elects the teachers, not teachers the 
superintendent. I do not like this word election, 



44 SUNDAY-SCHOOL ORGANIZATION. 

anyhow, as applied to such matters. I would as 
soon speak of the minister's electing some one to 
pray at the Friday night prayer-meeting. As the 
minister conducts the prayer-meeting, so the super- 
intendent conducts the school, calling to his assist- 
ance, and at his discretion, such members of the 
congregation as he needs and as are willing to co- 
operate with him in the work. 

Such, I believe, is the ordinary and actual mode 
of doing things, whatever theory to the contrary 
people may have. I never yet knew a school that 
was thoroughly alive and efficient that was not con- 
ducted virtually on this plan, and I have known 
scores of good schools killed by attempting to carry 
the other plan into practice. If, whenever a teacher 
leaves the school, or a new class is organized, or a 
teacher becomes remiss or shows signs of hopeless 
incompetency, a teachers' meeting is to be called, 
and the matter of personal merits and demerits is to 
be discussed and a vote to be taken, how can it be 
possible to avoid heart-burnings-, wranglings and 
alienations? The selection and the displacement of 
teachers in a work so purely voluntary as that of 
the Sunday-school are matters requiring the utmost 
delicacy and tact, and any attempt to manage them 
by means of public discussion and popular vote 
must end in disaster. Patriarchal government, not 
democracy, is the want of the Sunday-school. 

It will be objected, perhaps, that I make the 
superintendent an autocrat, and that the plan takes 



SUNDAY-SCHOOL ORGANIZATION. 45 

away all self-respect and freedom of action from the 
teacher. But let it be remembered that the superin- 
tendent holds a similar relation to a power above 
him, from which he receives his own appointment 
and authority, and to which, in turn, he is amenable, 
and that in case of delinquency or incompetency of 
any kind he too may be dealt with, just as the in- 
competent or delinquent teacher is dealt with by 
him. Let it be remembered, too, by those who fear 
that our theory will lead to superciliousness, arro- 
gance, or abuse of any kind, on the part of the super- 
intendent, that the service is a purely voluntary one 
on the part of the teacher, and thus the teachers 
have it most effectually in their power to check any 
arbitrary or undue exercise of authority on the part 
of the superintendent. 

My readers will excuse me for having dwelt a lit- 
tle on this matter. I feel persuaded that the efficiency 
of our Sunday-school operations has been much im- 
pared by the vague, ill-defined notions prevalent on 
this subject. Practically, superintendents and teach- 
ers have acted on the plan which I recommend, 
while their theory of action has been all the other 
way, and this difference between what, according to 
their theory, they ought to do, and what, by the sheer 
necessities of the case, they are compelled to do, has 
produced a state of hesitation and uncertainty entirely 
incompatible with the highest efficiency. No correct- 
ness of theory, indeed, will give to an incompetent 
superintendent common sense, tact, discretion, or 



46 SUNDAY-SCHOOL ORGANIZATION. 

executive ability. But supposing him to have these 
qualities, it certainly does add greatly to the ease and 
efficiency with which he can work the complicated 
machinery, to have his relations to its several parts 
clearly understood and recognized, not only by the 
church authorities, but also by the teachers. 

It does not follow from the view which I have 
taken of the superintendent's relations to the teachers 
that, on taking charge of an established school, 
he will feel called upon to displace the existing 
teachers merely to re-appoint them or to appoint 
others. It is to be taken for granted that he has 
some few grains of common sense, and that he will 
be only too glad to retain in the service the faithful 
workers that he finds there. But when on full trial 
it is plain that any particular teacher is out of place, 
and the good of the school requires a change, or 
when the methods of any teacher are capable of 
being improved by wise and kindly suggestions, or 
when a teacher is wanted for a newly-formed class, 
I cannot doubt that such changes and choices are 
purely administrative, and come within the functions 
of the superintendent rather than those of the teach- 
ers' meeting. I can as little doubt that this putting 
into the superintendent's hands, distinctly and avow- 
edly, the duty of calling teachers to his aid where 
needed, and of displacing or changing teachers when 
necessary, contributes as much to the harmony and 
good feeling of all concerned as it does to unity and 
efficiency of effort. 



SUNDAY-SCHOOL ORGANIZATION. 



47 



To sum up in a few words my whole theory of 
Sunday-school organization: 

The church selects the superintendent ; the super- 
intendent selects his secretary, librarian, chorister 
and teachers. 

The secretary, librarian, chorister and teachers are 
responsible to the superintendent ; the superintendent 
is responsible to the church. 




CHAPTER III, 



THE SUPERINTENDENT. 




HERE is not much exaggeration in the 
common saying that the superintendent is 
the school. Scholars and teachers of course 
are needed in making a school. But scholars and 
teachers are of little avail without a superintending 
head. A number of people, young and old, brought 
together without any organic centre of action, do not 
constitute a school. They are only a mass-meeting 
on a small scale. Chemistry gives us a good illus- 
tration of this idea. Two or three different kinds of 
materials put into a vessel make simply a confused 
mixture. But add another ingredient of exactly the 
right kind, and the confused mass becomes at once 
organic. It is forthwith converted into a crystal, 
every little molecule finding its appropriate place 
with all the exactness of a mathematical formula. 
The superintendent is the crystallizing ingredient in 
the Sunday-school, giving form and order to what 
would otherwise be chaos, changing into a school 
what would otherwise be a mere mass-meeting. 
If the superintendent is the right sort of a man, 
48 



THE SUPERINTENDENT. 49 

the school will flourish despite all adverse influences. 
If the superintendent is incapable or faithless, the 
school will languish and dwindle despite the best 
of teachers and the most favorable circumstances. 
The case can hardly be expressed too strongly. A 
good superintendent is a sine qua non of a good 
school. 

It is not every one who is capable of being a good 
superintendent. Yet there are probably in every 
community more persons than is generally supposed 
who have the capacity if it were only properly 
developed, and many of those who are now exercis- 
ing the office in a feeble and unsatisfactory manner 
might attain high excellence in it, if only they would 
take the necessary means. It is worth while, there- 
fore, to make some special study of this important 
matter. Clear ideas in regard to the nature of the 
superintendent's office conduce greatly to its efficiency 
and to the success of the school. Some persons 
who have really all the substantial qualities needed 
in a superintendent fail through a mistaken notion 
of what a man in that position ought to do. I have 
one instance at this very moment in my mind, of a 
gentleman who presides over a large business con- 
cern with admirable success, managing its compli- 
cated affairs with system, order, and tact, and who, 
if he would only bring into the school the same 
methods that he applies to his business, would meet 
there with a like success ; but unfortunately he has in 
his head a false theory of What a Sunday-school 
5 D 



50 THE SUPERINTENDENT. 

superintendent should be, and in carrying out this 
theory he is killing his school. Let us soberly con- 
sider, then, what are some of the qualities needed 
in a good superintendent, and what are some of the 
things which he has to do. 

I. The First Qualification. 

Earnest Piety. It is hardly necessary to say, the 
superintendent should be a man of unmistakable piety. 
In many respects the duties and qualifications of 
the superintendent differ from those of the teacher. 
But in one particular they are on common ground. 
Both alike seek the renewing power of the Holy 
Spirit for the salvation of the scholars, both need to 
feel that power in their own hearts. Whoever en- 
gages in the Sunday-school work, in any of its de- 
partments, needs, above all other qualifications, that 
of a renewed heart, thoroughly devoted to the Mas- 
ter's service. There are emergencies, indeed, in 
which, rather than let a class be disbanded, a teacher 
may rightly be employed who is not a converted 
person. But no emergency seems possible in which 
it would be right to place an unconverted man in 
the position of Sunday-school superintendent. In 
regard to the other qualifications which are to be 
spoken of, they are all desirable, and the person 
should be selected who has the greatest amount and 
variety of them. But this one qualification is indis- 
pensable. No matter w T hat a man's abilities or at- 
tainments may be, he is not to be once thought of 



THE SUPERINTENDENT. 51 

for the office unless he is a real, earnest, devoted 
Christian. 

There is such a unanimity of opinion on this point 
that it has seemed hardly necessary to name it, much 
less to dwell upon it. Yet I shall have to dwell so 
much upon other points, and especially upon those 
qualities which relate rather to one's ordinary bus- 
iness capacity, that there may possibly be the risk of 
misapprehension. Let me be understood, then, 
once for all, as holding not only that the Sunday- 
school superintendent should be a real, sincere, earn- 
est Christian, but that this element of character is the 
very first, the principal, the main consideration in 
estimating his fitness for the office. The superin- 
tendent should not only be pious, but eminent for 
piety. He should be one who feels the burden of 
souls upon him ; one w 7 ho is much in secret prayer, 
crying mightily to God night and day for the out- 
pouring of the Spirit ; one who, without importunity 
or solicitation from others, from the mere yearnings 
of his own irrepressible desires, will make large 
sacrifices of ease, of time and of money for the pro- 
motion of the cause ; one who yearns to see souls 
saved and the Master honored more than he longs 
or labors for success in any worldly business. 

This earnest, whole-souled piety has a wonderful 
transforming effect upon the character, developing 
in every direction whatever other natural qualifica- 
tions a man may have. It .redoubles his vigilance, 
his punctuality, his labors of every kind ; it gives 



52 THE SUPERINTENDENT. 

tact to the awkward, it makes the slow of speech 
eloquent. The man who has this earnest, burning, 
self-sacrificing, self-consecrating zeal will find time, 
even at the expense of worldly interests, to do some- 
thing daily for his school. He will deal faithfully in 
private with the delinquent teacher. He will visit 
sick, or neglected, or truant scholars. He will seek, 
as for hid treasures, for every symptom of the work 
of the Spirit upon the hearts of the children. Every 
teacher, every class, every scholar will be engraved 
upon his heart ; for every one of them will he make 
statedly earnest personal supplication ; not one of all 
the crowd will appear before him on the Sabbath 
whose name has not been on his lips at some time 
during the week, as he has wrestled with God in 
secret prayer. Such a man, so coming before the 
school, so mingling among the scholars, must needs 
be a mighty power for good. The superintendent 
who has to the full this first, main qualification for 
the office can hardly fail of a good measure of suc- 
cess, whatever other secondary qualities he may 
lack. 

2. The Second Qualification, 

Executive Ability. The superintendent should 
have good executive ability. It is not easy to define 
exactly what is meant by this term. The thing it- 
self, however, is something that we all recognize 
wherever we see it. It is, to speak generally, the 
ability to see clearly what agencies are needed for 



THE SUPERINTENDENT. 53 

success in any enterprise, combined with a certain 
inventive power in finding out such agencies and 
employing them in their appropriate work. A man 
of executive ability is not the one who attempts to 
do everything himself, but one who knows how to 
utilize the talents of other people. A man who is 
fit to superintend a railroad or a machine shop or a 
cotton mill, or to manage any large business in which 
the co-operation of many human wills is concerned, 
has the kind of executive ability required in superin- 
tending a Sunday-school. A man is w 7 anted who 
knows how to make others co-operate harmoniously 
and efficiently to a common end. Such talent, 
though undoubtedly rare, is not so rare as is gener- 
ally supposed. All the organized agencies of busi- 
ness require it, and so tend continually to develop it. 
What we w T ant is to summon to our aid in the Sun- 
day-school just that kind of aid which every ex- 
tended business enterprise seems somehow to succeed 
in finding. The reason that this quality is so often 
wanting in Sunday-school management is that those 
who select the superintendent do not distinctly look 
for this as a leading and indispensable requisite. 
They forget that it is not the man who can make 
the best prayer, not the man who can speak with 
greatest glibness on anniversary occasions, not even 
the man who is the best teacher, that is wanted, but 
the one who combines with the first qualification I 
have mentioned, the best executive and administra- 
" tive ability. 
5* 



54 THE SUPERINTENDENT. 

3. Things Not Wanted. 

There are some things not wanted in the superin- 
tendent. 

1. He should not be fussy. It is not easy to 
define in words what is meant by this epithet, but 
probably every reader understands it without a 
definition. Some superintendents make such an 
ado about every little thing, good or bad, that takes 
place in the school, as to keep the attention of the 
classes all the while distracted. The superintendent 
should study composure of manner in conducting the 
routine of business, and so far as possible avoid at- 
tracting the attention of either scholars or teachers 
except when he specifically w T ants their attention. 

2. The superintendent should not be fretful. 
He needs especially to guard against this dispo- 
sition, because in a large school there are, of 
necessity, many things to fret and worry him ; and if 
he yields to the temptation and loses his equanimity, 
he is sure to make matters worse. Some things will 
go wrong, no matter how w r ell he may lay his plans. 
There will be noise in one class, a teacher absent in 
another, bad teaching or bad example in another. 
The librarian may be behindhand in his work, or 
the secretary not accurate enough in his entries, or 
ill feeling may show itself in scholars or in teachers. 
Let the superintendent resolve to do what he can 
to allay discontent and to keep the machine in 
good working order, not ashamed to profit by his 



THE SUPERINTENDENT. 55 

own mistakes, when he makes mistakes, and then 
receive with equanimity the result, w r hatever it 
may be. 

3. The superintendent should not be noisy. He 
should learn to step lightly, to speak gently and 
to keep his hand off the bell. When will superin- 
tendents learn that making noise is not the way to 
stop noise? If the school is getting noisy, look 
quietly round the room till you see just where the 
noise is, and going there put your finger directly on 
the cause. Say to Mr. A., " Perhaps you are speak- 
ing a little louder than you are aware." Say to Mr. 
B., " Could you not get the boys in your class to 
answer in a rather lower tone?" Say to Mr. C, 
" The boys at this end of the bench are taking ad- 
vantage of your back while you are turned round to 
talk to those at the other end." Say to the librarian, 
" Ask your assistants to be a little more quiet in the 
discharge of their duties." Find some one to take 
charge of that class which is running riot without a 
teacher. Go round thus from point to point, where 
the chief sources of noise exist, and use, in the most 
noiseless way possible, the means of suppression at 
your disposal. Remember that, for reducing a 
noisy school to order, one pair of eyes is worth 
twenty pair of lungs. If, instead of these quiet 
means of repression, you go rushing about the room 
as some superintendents do, bell in hand, rattling, 
ringing, shouting, stamping, snapping your fingers, 
pounding the desk, and making all sorts of frantic 



56 THE SUPERINTENDENT. 

gestures, you only make confusion worse confounded. 
Be quiet if you would have quiet. 

4. The superintendent should not be a great 
talker. Frequent harangues from the desk are 
the bane of a school. Let not the superintendent 
mistake his function for that of the teacher. From 
the desk, as from the central spring of motion, he 
should indeed direct and penetrate all the general 
movements of the school — the prayer, the singing, 
the responsive reading, and so forth. But if he cuts 
short the time of the teachers for the purpose of 
haranguing the school, whether upon the lesson or 
upon anything else, he is a trespasser. There are 
times, indeed, when the superintendent should ad- 
dress the school from the desk. But to do so habit- 
ually and as a matter of course, on closing the school, 
is a grievous mistake. It is unfortunately a mistake 
made most frequently by those who seem least con- 
scious of their inability to speak profitably to chil- 
dren. They seem to have no faculty of seeing that, 
while they are talking, not one child in ten is 
listening to them. When the superintendent has 
something special to say to the school — which 
will of course happen occasionally — the very rarity 
of it will draw attention. And let him know be- 
forehand exactly what he is going to say. The 
extemporaneous fumbling in which some indulge 
in presence of a Sunday-school betrays a contempt 
for the institution which soon recoils on the per- 
petrator. 



THE SUPERINTENDENT. 57 

The school is to be pitied that has a fussy, a fret- 
ful, a noisy or a talking superintendent. 

4. Putting Forth a Personal Influence. 

The word personality is commonly used to mean 
something said or written which refers, especially in 
a disparaging way, to the conduct or character of 
another. It is not that kind of personality of which 
I wish now to speak. What I refer to is that put- 
ting forth of direct, personal influence which consti- 
tutes in every enterprise one of the great elements of 
power. It is an indispensable feature in the work 
of the Sunday-school superintendent. 

In the solution of a mathematical problem, or in the 
investigation of a metaphysical truth, one may be as 
impersonal as he pleases — the more impersonal and 
abstract the better. But in the management of af- 
fairs where human interests are concerned, and 
where living souls, with all their varied passions, 
prejudices, affections and wills are the factors in 
every problem that comes up for solution, mere 
reason and logic, separated from all personal consid- 
erations and influences, do not go far. The superin- 
tendent who wishes to accomplish anything substan- 
tial must throw himself into the work. It is not in 
mere rules to govern a school. Government of any 
kind should indeed act according to rule. But after 
all there is no vitality in a mere rule. Governing is 
in its essence a personal matter. Whoever moulds 
and manages the characters' of others, especially in 



58 THE SUPERINTENDENT. 

an organization like that of the Sunday-school, must 
do it, not by a code of rules which in themselves are 
so much dead paper, but by bringing his personal 
influence to bear upon the scholars and teachers un- 
der his direction. 

It is a great mistake in a superintendent to be 
afraid of showing emotion. It is not in human na- 
ture to be greatly influenced by any one unless there 
is felt to be some bond of sympathy between the par- 
ties. The superintendent should be a man of a sym- 
pathetic nature, and should not shrink from giving 
expression to his sympathies. This is the Scripture 
method. The Bible does not set forth bald truth in 
syllogisms and logical statements like an algebraic 
equation, or like the formulas of chemical affinity, 
but teaches us doctrines and duties in their connec- 
tions w 7 ith human interests and passions. " The 
words of King Lemuel, the prophecy that his moth- 
er taught him." Here the affection of a loving boy 
for the mother that bore him is used to give force 
to the divine precepts. " My son, hear the instruc- 
tion of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy 
mother" " Hear, ye children, the instruction of a 
father, and attend to know understanding. For I 
was my father's son, tender and only beloved in the 
sight of my mother" Thus, everywhere in Scrip- 
ture, the tenderest and most endearing of earthly re- 
lations are appealed to in moving men to receive 
what is in itself true, or to do what is in itself right. 
It is even represented as one of the reasons for the 



THE SUPERINTENDENT. 59 

incarnation that the Saviour, being himself a man, 
might be one who could be touched with the feeling 
of our infirmities — one who could sympathize with 
us — one to whom we could go in our troubles as we 
would go to a brother. 

A superintendent who would make himself felt 
all through his school must continually put himself 
forth — not egotistically, not dictatorially, but by a 
warm, genuine, manifested sympathy. There is in 
the minds of many good men a constitutional shrink- 
ing from this process of sending out their feelings to- 
ward others. They are afraid of being too demon- 
strative. This natural timidity is increased by the 
unfavorable criticisms which they hear in regard to 
others who make a great show of interest in the 
work. But I am not advocating sham, or pretence, 
or a mere show of interest where the reality itself is 
wanting. If the superintendent has not this real in- 
terest in his scholars or his teachers, no make-believe 
will take its place. Even if he has a genuine feeling 
of interest in them, yet if his controlling motive in 
the matter is a love of display or a desire to show 
himself off, the weakness will make itself seen 
through all his attempted disguises, and he will not 
win the confidence and affection which he seeks. 

But some superintendents, seeing instances of self- 
seeking and of pretence of this sort, make the mis- 
take of going into the opposite extreme, and of not 
showing the love and sympathy which they really 
feel. When they speak to their school, it is always 



60 THE SUPERINTENDENT. 

with a sort of diplomatic reserve. Surely this is not 
the kind of feeling which ought to exist between a 
superintendent and his school. The only remedy for 
a superintendent who feels this embarrassing shy- 
ness is to have such a personal interest in every 
teacher and every scholar" that he cannot help show- 
ing it. And the true way to awaken this interest is, 
by continual visitation and inquiry, to make himself 
personally acquainted with every member of his 
charge. We cannot feel a personal interest in any 
one unless we know something about him — who he 
is, where he is, what are his surroundings, what has 
been his history. 

To obtain this knowledge of all the members of a 
large school is no light matter. It implies a great 
deal of labor. One must take many weary walks, 
and give to the subject many hours of patient, plod- 
ding inquiry outside of the time occupied with the 
sessions of the school. The superintendent needs to 
have the same thoroughly familiar knowledge of his 
school that the teacher should have of the lesson, 
and this knowledge is to be bought by labor only. 
But once obtained, it is an element of power. It is 
the only thing that makes real sympathy possible or 
its manifestation easy and natural. 

A superintendent who thus knows personally 
every member of his school can let his feelings of 
kindness flow forth toward them intelligently in all 
the little details of administration without the ap- 
pearance of affectation, and he will almost certainly 



THE SUPERINTENDENT. 6 1 

find himself doing so without so much as once 
thinking of it. His mind will be so much occupied 
with. his scholars that he will forget all about himself. 
This self-forgetfulness, in the very act of the most 
intense self-projection, gives to its possessor a sort of 
magnetic power. It gives him the utmost freedom 
in throwing his own personal wishes and opinions 
as a make-weight into the scale in all the number- 
less decisions which scholars and teachers are called 
upon to make. It helps them ; it is wise and right 
in him. The superintendent should distinctly aim 
to put forth this kind of personality — to make him- 
self personally felt in every class and by every mem- 
ber of his school. 

5. Knowledge of what is Passing in the School. 

The superintendent ought to know thoroughly 
what is going on in his school. This is by no means 
an easy task. He ought to be able to gauge the 
mental attainments and the capacity of each of the 
teachers, to know what amount of preparation they 
make for the weekly lessons, what are their methods 
of teaching, and what they actually do teach or fail 
to teach. I once knew a lady w T ho interested very 
much her class of intelligent girls, but on inquiry it 
was found that they were being indoctrinated in no- 
tions about religion and the Bible quite at variance 
with the standards of the church to which the school 
belonged. In another instance a class was ap- 
parently in a very flourishing condition, but the rapt 



62 THE SUPERINTENDENT. 

attention of the children, which gave such a pleasing 
appearance to a visitor or a casual observer, was due 
to the fact that the romantic young lady who had 
charge of it merely entertained the children Sunday 
after Sunday with a succession of captivating stories 
instead of indoctrinating them in Bible knowledge. 
Another teacher, a gentleman, who had a flourishing 
Bible-class for larger boys, kept it full by giving 
them entertaining bits of history and natural science. 
Now it is the business of the superintendent, with- 
out playing the spy or the eaves-dropper, yet in some 
way, to know what his teachers are and what they 
are doing. It is not in rules to prescribe how this 
knowledge shall be acquired. No two men will 
acquire it alike. The man must cultivate a talent 
for observation. An eminent dry goods merchant 
of Philadelphia some years ago constructed a store 
with special reference to his idea of superintendence. 
His own private 'office was perched up midway be- 
tween the upper and the lower floors, and every desk 
and counter in the establishment was so arranged 
as to come within the range of vision from this un- 
seen observatory. There, spider-like, sitting at the 
centre of his web, he could look out upon every boy 
and girl and man and customer in the vast estab- 
lishment without once showing himself. It was a 
mechanically perfect system of espionage. For my 
own part, after being made acquainted with this 
arrangement, I never entered the store without a 
feeling of degradation. I am very certain the system 



THE SUPERINTENDENT, 63 

must have defeated itself by its debasing effects upon 
the minds of the employes. It begot eye-service 
instead of open-handed honesty. There is another 
large trading establishment with which I have been 
for many years familiar, in which no such mean and 
offensive tricks are resorted to, and yet it is evident 
that the gentlemanly proprietor, as he passes in and 
out through the various departments of his little 
kingdom, is thoroughly acquainted with the personal 
peculiarities and the modes of business of every 
employe. 

The Sunday-school superintendent, of all men, 
must not play the spy upon his fellow-laborers. And 
yet, if he is to do his own work intelligently and well, 
he must know what they are doing and what they 
can do. He must have a similar knowledge in re- 
gard to the affairs of the librarian and the library. 
He must know as much as practicable of each scholar. 
I put in a qualification here, because in a large school 
it is hardly possible for a superintendent to be thor- 
oughly acquainted with each scholar ; yet the nearer 
he can approach this knowledge the better. A su- 
perintendent's power in the school is increased in 
proportion to the fulness of this personal knowledge. 
It would be well if he knew familiarly the name, 
residence and domestic circumstances of every schol- 
ar, as well as of every teacher. Many of the sad 
mistakes which mar his work would be avoided if 
through visitation in the different homes he acquired 
this knowledge. 



64 THE SUPERINTENDENT. 

6. Knowledge, of the Lesson. 

The superintendent must know thoroughly the 
lesson. I say "the" lesson, because I have in mind 
those schools which have. a uniform lesson for the 
whole school. Whether there is or is not a teachers' 
meeting, in which the common lesson is studied and 
reviewed under the supervision of the superintendent, 
he ought in any case to prepare himself on the lesson 
for the week even more laboriously and minutely than 
those who have the direct charge of classes. The fact 
that the superintendent is thoroughly familiar with 
every minute point of the lesson exerts insensibly a 
wholesome influence on both scholars and teachers. 
Neither teachers nor scholars are ambitious of expos- 
ing their ignorance in the presence of one whose quick 
ear is sure to notice the least mistake, even though 
he may never mention it. Besides, the superintend- 
ent will be often appealed to for information upon 
different points in the lesson, and he ought to be able 
to resolve at once every such difficulty brought to 
him. 

Moreover, though the superintendent should be 
sparing of his talk, as before intimated, yet occasion- 
ally at least, in closing the school, he may find it 
important to address the school upon something con- 
nected with the lesson, and nothing but an entire 
familiarity with the lesson will enable him to do so 
with the proper effect. Nothing is easier than for 
a superintendent to weaken his authority with both 



THE SUPERINTENDENT, 65 

scholars and teachers by unpremeditated, injudicious 
talk from the desk. 

Knowledge, then, is of transcendent importance 
to the superintendent — -a knowledge of the lesson 
and a knowledge of his school — not vague, dreamy 
ideas, but specific, certain, direct knowledge— such 
knowledge as comes only from hard work, but always 
brings with it power. 

In the various essays which I have read about the 
office of Sunday-school superintendent, it has always 
seemed to me that there was a good deal of waste of 
words. Talents of various kinds are enumerated, 
the necessity of which no one would question. The 
only difficulty is to find the man who possesses them. 
We must take for our superintendent the best man 
we can get in the congregation. If there are certain 
natural gifts which he lacks, we cannot clothe him 
with them by merely prescribing them as among the 
qualifications for the office. But there are requisites 
for the office which are within the reach of every 
man who will take the necessary pains, and these 
requisites we cannot insist on too much. Not every 
man has a pleasant voice or a winning address ; not 
every man is gifted by nature with what we call tact. 
It is not in books, or essays, or convention resolu- 
tions to give these qualities to those from whom na- 
ture has withheld them. But every superintendent 
who wishes it, and who will take the necessary pains, 
may have that knowledge of his scholars and of what 
they are studying, of which I have been speaking. 
6* E 



66 THE SUPERINTENDENT. 

The proper amount of labor will ensure him this great 
desideratum. It may cost one more labor than it 
costs another ; but the knowledge will come if he 
will only pay the price, and it will assuredly make 
him potential in the management of his school. In- 
stead of sighing vainly for things beyond his reach, 
let him set himself diligently to work at this which 
he can compass. 

7. Bestowing Attention upon All, 

Another point equally unambitious and unpre- 
tending, yet equally within the reach of honest en- 
deavor, is to give every scholar and teacher, and to 
every part of the working of the school, some fair 
amount of attention. The work of the superintend- 
ent should be much more a work of detail than 
many persons imagine. It does not consist in mak- 
ing now and then a grand splurge, but in incessant 
and almost omnipresent labor — doing a little here 
and a little there, going round to all parts of the 
machinery, like the engineer with his oil-can, lubri- 
cating this joint, putting the screw on that, and see- 
ing that every part is in good working order. Some 
men, of course, have a more natural aptitude for this 
kind of work than others have. But it is obvious 
that every one may fulfil this condition of the office 
who will take the necessary pains. Any superin- 
tendent who has fulfilled the preceding conditions — 
who knows every class, every teacher, every scholar, 
every part of the lesson, every book in the library — 



THE SUPERINTENDENT. 67 

can know perfectly well whether there is any class, 
scholar, teacher, or other part of his little kingdom 
to which he is not giving attention and help, and by 
increasing sufficiently his labor and activity he can 
supply the defect. He cannot, perhaps, be any more 
eloquent or persuasive as a speaker ; he cannot com- 
mand the dexterity and the winning address of some ; 
but he can attend to the wants of Richard as well as 
to those of William ; he can see that the children in 
that obscure corner of the room are cared for as well 
as those in a more conspicuous position ; he can s^e 
that the librarians are doing their work without in- 
terfering with the work of the teachers ; he can find 
some one to look after that sick child who is kept 
from school from illness, or that bad child who is 
playing truant. The superintendent, in short, if he 
will, may make himself pervasive — reaching and 
touching every part of the complicated machinery un- 
der his control — and it is this faithful, humble work 
of omnipresent detail, rather than shining and conspic- 
uous gifts, which brings out great results in the end. 

8. Having Sympathy with AIL 

Still another point, not requiring special natural 
endowments, but coming within the reach of every 
superintendent who is willing to pay the price, is 
that he have an active sympathy with every member 
of his school, whether teacher or scholar, entering 
with feeling into their joys and sorrows, their suc- 
cesses and their disappointments. Here, again, men 



68 THE SUPERINTENDENT. 

differ in the facility with which they enter into the 
feelings of others. It is for some a very hard work 
to become sharers in the experiences of another. 
But there is no man who cannot feel this active sym- 
pathy if he will, and every time he allows his sympa- 
thies to be thus exercised, the exercise of them will 
become easier, until finally they will flow forth 
spontaneously and readily on every appropriate 
occasion. I am disposed to emphasize this point, 
because I am persuaded that it is a good deal over- 
looked and underrated. It makes a great difference 
in the success of a child in school, especially if it be 
one who, from ignorance, humbleness of position, or 
infirmity of any kind, naturally needs help and sup- 
port, that such child in its troubles should feel sure 
of a ready sympathy from the superintendent. A 
man having a large-hearted and ready sympathy 
has in that very thing a mighty source of power. 
A man who has learned not officiously to meddle, 
but truly to sympathize with all those under his con- 
trol, has therein one of the very best means of exer- 
cising that control. Here, too, as in the previous 
cases, it is a work of almost infinite detail. It is not 
by making a gushing speech on some grand occasion 
that the superintendent is to gain supreme ascend- 
ency over the hearts of his scholars, but by bestow- 
ing his sympathies as the occasions require, all the 
time, and on all alike. 

No man can reach the full measure of success as a 
superintendent who does not make every scholar and 



THE SUPERINTENDENT. 69 

every teacher feel that he or she is individually known 
by him, and has in him a ready sympathizer and 
friend ; and no man need fail in producing this 
impression who is willing to give the necessary price. 

9. Classifying the School. 

Next to keeping order, the superintendent has no 
duty more urgent or imperative than that of making 
a proper classification of his scholars. The duty is 
not without its difficulties. Superintendents often 
enter upon their work with vague ideas of what they 
have to do. They have never distinctly settled in 
their own minds on what principles the classification 
should be made, if indeed they have fully settled the 
question that they have a positive and distinct duty 
at all in regard to it. So when the moment of action 
comes they hesitate and are at a loss, and let matters 
drift without any settled order. Some enterprising 
teacher has been missionating during the week, and 
has succeeded in bringing several new pupils into 
the school. Being the fruits of her own labor, she 
naturally w 7 ants to have them in her class, and they 
themselves, knowing perhaps no one in the school 
but her, and feeling timid and shy, wish to be with 
her. Perhaps they even stipulate this as the con- 
dition of remaining in school at all. Or perhaps the 
new-comers have been led into the school by some 
of the other scholars with whom they are acquainted, 
and they want to sit with their friends. Or there is 
some particular teacher in school of whom they have 



Jo THE SUPERINTENDENT. 

heard, and they have come to join his or her class. 
More frequently they have their dislikes, and they 
are unwilling to sit with a certain pupil or in a cer- 
tain class, or to be instructed by this or that teacher. 
Or they are large and overgrown, and they claim to 
be put in the Bible-class, no matter how deficient 
they may be in knowledge. These are some of the 
difficulties which the superintendent has to meet in 
disposing of new scholars. In the case of pupils 
already in the school who are found to have been im- 
properly classified, the difficulty of a rectification is 
greatly increased. Nowhere do children form such 
tenacious attachments as in their Sunday-school 
class. There is sure to be a scene whenever the 
superintendent undertakes to remove a pupil from 
one class to another, and not unfrequently the pupil 
leaves school in consequence. Children have been 
placed together because perhaps they happen to be 
acquainted out of school, or because they are of 
about the same age or size, and having formed a 
part of the same magic little circle for a considerable 
length of time, they cannot bear to be torn from it. 

The superintendent who forms to himself a dis- 
tinct plan for classifying his scholars, and who under- 
takes to carry it out by removing pupils who are out 
of place to the classes to which of right they ought 
to belong, and who exercises the same judgment and 
prerogative in assigning new scholars to their appro- 
priate classes, must expect to give dissatisfaction in 
many quarters. He need not be surprised if some 



THE SUPERINTENDENT. 7 1 

of his scholars are so much offended as to leave him. 
Even at such a cost it is better to go forward. 
Should the school be permanently diminished in 
numbers in consequence of his insisting upon a 
proper classification, the evil would be more than 
counterbalanced by the improved condition of those 
that remain. More good can be accomplished in a 
school of one hundred pupils well classified than in 
a school of one hundred and fifty pupils thrown to- 
gether promiscuously. But there is no danger of a 
school's declining in numbers in consequence of its 
being carefully and judiciously classified. For every 
pupil or teacher that leaves in pique on this account, 
two or three others will be added on account of the 
improved tone of the school which will result. 

The points to be considered in classification are 
age, size, social condition, intellectual progress, and 
individual peculiarities. Let me say a few words in 
regard to each of these. 

i. Age. The superintendent would of course be 
unwise who should be governed by age alone in 
making up his classes ; who should put all his nine- 
year olds into one fold, all his ten-year olds into an- 
other, and so on. Yet there is an extreme at the 
other end which needs equally to be avoided. Very 
often adults come into our Sunday-schools — grown- 
up men and women — who can scarcely read, if even 
they can read at all, who are not more advanced in 
their studies than are the classes just above the infant- 
school. Surely it would riot be wise to put such 



*]2 THE SUPERINTENDENT. 

adults in with children eight or ten years old. The 
arrangement would be uncomfortable and unprofit- 
able all round. Some regard must be had to the 
age of the scholar in assigning him to a place in the 
school. Other things being equal, scholars get along 
better together who are of nearly equal age. Some 
concessions, therefore, must be made on this point. 
If a scholar is not quite equal in attainments to the 
class in which you put him, it is yet worthy of con- 
sideration whether, on the whole, he will not do 
better there than he would among scholars much 
younger than himself. In a large school, also, it 
often happens that there are adults enough to form 
several classes, and in such a case the superintendent 
may have the means of forming an adult class, all of 
whom are deficient in book knowledge. Such op- 
portunities should be eagerly embraced. The insti- 
tution is never doing a more legitimate or a more 
hopeful work than when it numbers in its ranks 
entire classes of adults who can barely read, or even 
who cannot read at all. 

2. Size. Some superintendents will smile and 
shake their heads when size is mentioned among the 
things to be considered in making a classification. 
Yet it is a point which cannot be disregarded en- 
tirely. It has to be put very much on the same 
footing as age. A great, overgrown bumpkin often 
does not know enough to keep up with the scholars 
of his own size, and yet he feels extremely uncom- 
fortable if put among the little fellows who are his 



THE SUPERINTENDENT. 73 

equals in knowledge, and this feeling of discomfort 
and mortification, if not watched, will drive him 
from the school. If the superintendent has several 
scholars of the sort now described, he can form a 
class of them, and thus dispose of the difficulty. 
When, however, this is impracticable, the best way 
is to take a medium course. Put the scholar in a 
class about halfway between that suggested by his 
size and that suggested by his attainments. Though 
he will not profit there as much as he w r ould in a 
class lower down, yet he may gain something, and 
the arrangement may be the means of preventing his 
leaving school altogether. If indeed such an over- 
grown scholar is entirely willing to go among the 
little fellows, the superintendent will of course so 
place him. It is best for the superintendent in such 
cases to be entirely candid. Say to the youth 
frankly, You could get along better in this class 
(pointing it out), and I would advise you for your 
own good to enter it. But perhaps you may feel 
uncomfortable among scholars so much smaller than 
yourself. I can, if you desire it, put you into such a 
class (pointing to one consisting of scholars rather 
larger), but you will find it a good deal more diffi- 
cult to keep up with them in their lessons, and per- 
haps not be as pleasantly situated as you would be 
among the smaller scholars. I will leave it to your- 
self to decide. 

Not unfrequently, when the matter is presented in 
this way, the scholar will acquiesce in your views ; 
7 



74 THE SUPERINTENDENT. 

and when he does not, he is sure to be pleased with 
the evident consideration with which you have 
treated him. 

3. Social Condition. The superintendent here is 
treading upon dangerous ground, and many well- 
meaning people cry out against all attempts in the 
Sunday-school to recognize in any way the condition 
of the scholar outside of the school. Here, if any- 
where, it is said, rich and poor should meet together, 
and any classification based upon social condition is 
unchristian and wicked. With due deference I 
would say, this kind of talk is mere idle clamor. 
The superintendent should not be frightened by 
shadows, no matter by whom conjured up. If the 
school is small, as in most country schools, intel- 
lectual attainments must be almost the only thing to 
be taken into account in making up a class. But in 
a large city school there may be forty or fifty, or per- 
haps a hundred, scholars about equal as to attain- 
ments, age and size. Surely in grouping such a 
number into classes the superintendent would be 
unwise w 7 ho should not consider whether there were 
not other elements in the problem which would 
naturally draw some together and drive others apart. 
It is not a question of whether some are better than 
others or more worthy of consideration. In this 
respect they are all equal before the eyes of the super- 
intendent. The question is, What grouping of the 
scholars will most conduce to harmony, efficiency 
and comfort all round? Which arrangement will 



THE SUPERINTENDENT. 75 

produce least constraint and embarrassment? The 
child of the poor washerwoman who lives in some 
obscure court or alley is just as precious in the sight 
of the Master as the child of wealth who lives on 
Fifth Avenue. But the poor child has not the same 
opportunities of books and leisure as the other. The 
temptations of the one are different from those of the 
other. The entire current of their ideas is different. 
They do not feel at home with each other. The 
children of the poor particularly feel disobliged by 
being compelled to go into a class with children 
with whom they do not mix out of school, and not 
^infrequently this unnatural mode of classification 
drives away the poorer class of children from the 
school. I cannot doubt, therefore, that, other things 
being equal, and the number of scholars being suffi- 
ciently large to admit of it, some regard should be 
paid to the social condition of the scholars in assign- 
ing them to classes. Those scholars go best together 
in school who go most together out of school. 

4. Intellectual Progress. It is not necessary to 
argue the importance of this point. All superintend- 
ents and teachers agree in this. Scholars do best 
together in Bible study who are about on a par with 
each other in their other studies. The superintend- 
ent, therefore, on receiving a scholar and canvass- 
ing the question as to which class to assign him, 
should always take into account the progress which 
the scholar has already made in other studies, so as 
to put him as nearly as may be with his equals in 



76 THE SUPERINTENDENT. 

this respect. The error of some superintendents is 
that they consider this point only, and make no 
allowance for the others which have been named. 

5. Individual Peculiarities. Some scholars 
have peculiarities of temper or of manners or of 
mental action which require peculiar treatment, and 
these peculiarities have to be considered in deter- 
mining their classification. Some scholars are full 
of life, with a natural buoyancy of disposition and a 
tendency to fun. They bubble over on the least 
occasion. If two or three such happen to be in the 
same class, they, without any bad intention, upset 
all order and study. The superintendent therefore 
may find it wise to separate them. So with other 
peculiarities. They cannot, indeed, have a control- 
ling influence in the general arrangements of the 
school, but neither can they be entirely ignored by 
one who wants to get along comfortably. 

The work of classification is to be performed 
chiefly in the act of admitting new scholars. Occa- 
sionally the superintendent may exercise his prerog- 
ative in this respect by transferring pupils from the 
class in which they now are to other classes for which 
they are better fitted. But this almost always pro- 
duces friction, and it should be done, when done at 
all, with extreme caution, and after full consultation 
with the teachers concerned. But when a new 
scholar is introduced into the school, whether brought 
in by a teacher or by a scholar, or coming of his own 
accord, the invariable and inexorable rule should be 



THE SUPERINTENDENT. ^ 

that the scholar should be brought first of all to the 
superintendent before being taken to any class. If 
teachers or scholars bring in a new recruit, let them 
exercise entire freedom in expressing to the superin- 
tendent what they know in regard to the condition 
and character of the new scholar, and in expressing 
also their views in regard to the class to which he 
should be assigned. But at the same time let it be 
understood that in this matter the superintendent 
must be supreme. 

The superintendent should have a bench or form 
in some convenient part of the room for the recep- 
tion of new scholars. To this seat all new-comers 
should be conducted, and there they should remain 
until the superintendent is at leisure to dispose of 
them. He should, on receiving new scholars, in- 
quire of them with much particularity their name, 
age, residence (street and number), and all the other 
items of information needed in guiding him in the 
classification, and these items should be entered by 
him in a book. Some superintendents, particularly 
where the school is large, leave it to the secretary to 
make these inquiries. But the little conversation 
with a child needed for eliciting these particulars 
gives the superintendent the opportunity of forming 
some opinion in regard to him. It is a kind of in- 
formal examination which cannot well be done by 
proxy. The superintendent needs for his guidance 
just the information and the impression which this 
personal interview gives. Let the secretary transfer 



7§ THE SUPERINTENDENT. 

to his permanent record these items, so far as needed, 
from the superintendent's note-book, but let the 
original inquiries and notices be made in all cases 
by the superintendent himself. It is an important 
and intransferable part of his personal duties. 

No function of the superintendent requires for its 
exercise more sound judgment, good temper, and 
nerve than this duty of classifying his scholars. It 
will not do to adopt an iron rule in the matter, and 
follow out a theory regardless of consequences. The 
Sunday-school work is altogether a voluntary work, 
and a spirit of conciliation must be exercised. Large 
concessions must be made to prejudice, and some- 
times even to whim and caprice. But by persistent 
resolution in a conciliatory spirit, and by knowing 
exactly when it is expedient to resist and when to 
give way, the superintendent will in the end carry 
his point, and will have his reward in seeing the 
school achieve results entirely unattainable on any 
other basis. A good classification will cost some 
tears, perhaps some heartburnings, and it undoubt- 
edly requires some nerve. But it pays. 

10. Maintaining Order. 

Good order in a large Sunday-school is confessedly 
a difficult achievement. It is more difficult to main- 
tain order in the Sunday-school than in the secular 
school. In the latter the teacher is vested with more 
official authority, and may enforce obedience if ne- 
cessary by punishment and by other means of disci- 



THE SUPERINTENDENT, 79 

pline that cannot be used in the Sunday-school. 
Attendance in the latter being voluntary, a child, if 
obliged to submit against its will, may leave the 
school altogether. The difficulties inherent in the 
case are aggravated by others not necessarily belong- 
ing to it, though actually existing in ninety-nine cases 
out of a hundred. Among these may be mentioned 
the fact that a large part of the teachers are young 
and inexperienced, without practiced skill either in 
teaching or governing. Another source of difficulty 
arises from the fact that usually a large number of 
classes are reciting at the same time in the same 
room. Still another difficulty is that the classes 
come together but once a week, and then only for a 
single, short session. In the daily school the teacher, 
by continuing the pressure day after day, has a bet- 
ter opportunity of confirming his authority. But in 
the Sunday-school, what is gained one Sunday is in 
danger of being lost in the six days intervening. 
Altogether, it is no easy matter to maintain order 
and quiet among two or three hundred children, or 
even among a hundred children, organized in a Sun- 
day-school. 

The business of maintaining order in a Sunday- 
school, as in every other school, belongs partly to 
the superintendent or principal and partly to the 
teachers. Neither of these parties can fully succeed 
in this point without the efficient and wise co-opera- 
tion of the other. The duties of the two, however, 
though thus conjoined, are yet in their own nature 



So THE SUPERINTENDENT. 

distinct and different. What the teacher has to do 
in the maintenance of order is not only something to 
be done by himself and by nobody else, but also 
something different in kind from that to be done by 
any one else. Of the teacher's duty in the matter of 
order I shall have occasion to speak hereafter. My 
remarks at the present time will be confined to the 
duty of the superintendent in this respect. 

Before proceeding to these remarks, however, it is 
best to have some distinct understanding as to what 
school order is and what it includes. Order in Sun- 
day-school consists chiefly of these three points : 
doing things quietly, doing things at the right time, 
keeping both persons and things in their right place. 
Disorder, accordingly, consists in being noisy, out of 
time, out of place. This classification of course is not 
exhaustive. Yet any one who will take the trouble 
to consider will find that at least nine-tenths of what 
may be termed disorder in school may be reduced 
under these three heads. A few words upon each. 

i. Doing things Quietly. Some noise is to be 
expected in the Sunday-school — more, a good deal, 
than in other schools ; and this not only because the 
reins of discipline cannot be drawn so tightly as in 
other schools, but also and mainly because there are 
so many classes in the same room reciting at the 
same time. Twenty or thirty or fifty classes all re- 
citing at once in the same room must needs make 
some noise. The effort of teachers and of superin- 
tendent should be, not to suppress this noise, which 



THE SUPERINTENDENT. Si 

would be as undesirable as it is impracticable, but to 
keep it in check. Scholars and teachers should be 
trained to conduct their recitations in a subdued and 
quiet tone, just sufficiently above a whisper to make 
what is said distinctly audible in the class without 
being heard by those in the adjoining classes. When- 
ever the teacher or the scholars of one class raise 
their voices so as to be distinctly overheard outside 
of the class, they are becoming noisy, and need to be 
reminded of the error. 

But there are other sources of noise besides that 
arising from recitation. The movements of the libra- 
rians and of the secretary often produce unnecessary 
noise. Scholars are noisy in coming in and going 
out. Chairs and benches are upset through careless- 
ness ; the doors fly to with a bang. The superin- 
tendent himself oftentimes is noisy — talking in a loud 
tone to those around him, moving about the room 
with a heavy tread, worrying scholars and teachers 
with the everlasting tinkling of the bell, or, worse 
still, shouting aloud for silence, as if the only way to 
stop a noise was to drow T n it by making a greater 
noise. The superintendent who would have a quiet 
school must first of all learn to be quiet himself. 

A superintendent who is good for anything seldom 
sits at his desk. His place is on his feet ; he should 
be moving continually about the room, and nothing 
is beneath his regard which can help him in redu- 
cing the amount of noise which his movements may 
produce. He should learn to set his foot down 

F 



82 THE SUPERINTENDENT. 

lightly and to see that no " squeak-leather" is put 
into his boots. If he finds the classes becoming 
noisy, the way to stop the noise is, first to listen, 
that he may know exactly where repression is most 
needed, and then to go to the spot as quietly as pos- 
sible and notify the teacher. A teacher and a class 
who are very earnestly engaged in the discussion of 
a lesson often forget themselves and make an undue 
noise without being aware of it. The superintend- 
ent, from the very fact of his general oversight of 
the room, is in the position to know when the noise 
in any quarter is becoming excessive. 

Nine-tenths of the superintendent's time in school 
should be spent in thus passing round quietly from 
class to class, using his eyes more than his tongue, 
but ever ready to put in just the right word at the 
right moment, preventing disorder by removing its 
causes and nipping it in the bud before it becomes 
general. The superintendent should never scold. 
The moment he does so he begins to lose the respect 
of the scholars and his power over them. He should 
never show vexation, even if he cannot always help 
feeling it. Children do many things merely for the 
pleasure of seeing the irritation they produce. They 
love to tease you just as they love to tease a wasp. 
If no irritation is produced, there is no fun in it and 
they stop. 

Scholars also are prone to engage in what is called 
" cutting up," which creates distraction if not noise. 
It is the business of the superintendent to keep his 



THE SUPERINTENDENT. 83 

eyes open for anything of this kind, and to arrest it 
by the same process by which he arrests noise. Lret 
him, without attracting unnecessary observation, go 
directly to the place where the disorder exists, and 
there do whatever is needed with the least possible 
noise or fuss. Whether he reprimands a scholar or 
asks the teacher to do it, let him speak in a whisper. 
The very worst way for a superintendent to suppress 
disorder of any kind is for him to stand at his desk 
and shout or ring his bell. There is but one use for 
the bell in the school-room, namely, to give notice 
of the general movements of the school — to notify 
when lessons begin, when they stop, when school is 
to be closed, and so forth. It should never be used 
for arresting noise and disorder. To use the bell 
for this purpose is a most pitiable and humiliating 
confession of weakness on the part of the superin- 
tendent. 

2. Doing Things at the Right Time. The 
superintendent should make out an exact programme 
of what is to be done in school, and of the time to 
be allotted to each, and should keep the school up to 
time with the same strictness with which a railroad 
engineer moves his train from station to station. 
The time for opening and for closing should be as 
definite and certain as that for the departure of a 
railroad train. There should be a certain time dur- 
ing the session for giving out notices, for taking up 
and giving out library books, for distributing papers, 
for making collections, for making reports of classes, 



84 THE SUPERINTENDENT. 

and these things should be done only at the time ap- 
pointed in the programme. All this is a matter of 
order, and lies exclusively within the province of the 
superintendent. It requires on his part forethought, 
method, and decision. If an item of business of any 
kind has been forgotten at the right time, it is better 
generally to omit it entirely than to interpolate it out 
of its place. 

In making the programme two points should be 
kept firmly in mind, namely, so to order the busi- 
ness of the school as first to secure for the devotional 
part of the service entire freedom from interruption 
of every sort, and secondly to secure a good, solid, 
unbroken period of time for the instruction of the 
classes by the teachers. Nothing short of the house 
being on fire, or the roof falling in, should interfere 
with this time. No speech-making, no ringing the 
bell to give a notice, no running about of the secre- 
tary or of the librarian for reports or books, no in- 
troduction of distinguished visitors. From the time 
when the bell notifies the teachers to begin their 
lesson to the time when the same bell notifies them 
to stop the lesson, interruption of any kind is as 
much an impertinence as it would be for a like 
reason to interrupt the minister in the course of his 
sermon. The time proper for the lesson is in fact 
about as long as that ordinarily occupied by a ser- 
mon, and it should be held just as sacred and as free 
from intrusion. 

3. Keeping Things and Persons in Place. When 



THE SUPERINTENDENT. 85 

a child goes to school for the first time in his life, 
the first thing he has to learn usually is the necessity 
of remaining in his seat. Until distinctly told and 
trained otherwise, he will very likely move about 
from one part of the room to another just as he has 
been in the habit of doing at home. The necessity 
of sitting still must be drilled into him. Of course 
I do not mean that children should be immovable 
like so many statues. A little restlessness and twist- 
ing about and fidgeting is to be expected. The 
teacher is simply cruel who undertakes to stop it. 
What is meant by sitting still is the remaining in the 
same seat. A scholar should not be allowed to 
change his seat in the class, much less to go from 
one class to another, without the teacher's per- 
mission, and this latter only for the most urgent 
reasons. 

Should a scholar in any case be allowed to go out 
into the yard during the session of the school? Per- 
haps it would not do to forbid such a thing absolute- 
ly, yet the prohibition should be as nearly absolute 
as maybe. The Sunday-school lasts just about as 
long as the church service, and children are not 
allowed to go out of church during the service ; why 
should it be necessary during the time of school? If 
the permission to go out is granted, only one should 
go at a time, and the permission should be hedged 
in with so many difficulties and formalities that it 
would be seldom sought. Perhaps the safest check 
would be to let no one go out except on a written 



86 THE SUPERINTENDENT. 

application from the teacher to the superintendent. 
If any one thinks some such stringent check is 
not needed, let him pass through the yard of almost 
any Sunday-school during the time of the session, 
and he will find that I am speaking not without 
cause. 

But scholars are not the only ones requiring to be 
kept in place. Teachers sometimes commit the 
very great impropriety of leaving school during the 
session, or getting up from their classes to converse 
with other teachers, or with visitors, or going to the 
library. Surely such movements are an irregularity 
and a disorder, and require the interposition of the 
superintendent. 

The superintendent should in this matter look to 
things as well as to persons. By things I mean 
whatever in the school-room is of a movable charac- 
ter — the benches, the chairs, the desks, the books, 
the wall maps, the ornaments. Any confusion in 
these things has a tendency to produce confusion of 
mind in scholars and teachers. On the contrary, 
there is a certain comely and even pictorial arrange- 
ment of the furniture and apparatus of a school-room 
which has a corresponding and unconscious moral 
effect upon the minds of the scholars and teachers. 
The superintendent is not indeed to be the janitor or 
housekeeper, but he should have an eye to these 
things, and see that no confusion or disorder prevails 
in the arrangement of even the furniture of the 
school-room. 



THE SUPERINTENDENT. 87 

1 1 . Exercising Government. 

A Sunday-school does not cease to be a school be- 
cause it is an organization for religious purposes. 
Its prime function is that of teaching, and one of its 
necessary conditions is that of subordination and 
obedience, exactly as in every other school. There 
may be cases in certain bad neighborhoods where 
the best that can be done is to collect the children in 
a crowd and harangue them in a style suited to their 
rude natures, just as the politicians harangue a crowd 
of roughs at a mass meeting. We have children in 
our cities who can at first be reached in no other 
way, and we have men peculiarly fitted for this 
rough work ; a good and important work it is too. 
But it should be clearly understood that such gather- 
ings are not schools. A school necessarily implies 
subordination and government. The two correlated 
ideas of obedience on the one side and authority on 
the other lie at the basis of the whole superstructure, 
and these two ideas imply in turn some kind of sanc- 
tion by which in the last resort this obedience may 
be secured and this authority asserted. There must 
be, even in Sunday-school, some ultima ratio, some 
final appeal, which shall be competent to enforce its 
own laws. Just so far as this power is wanting the 
school loses its living principle as an organization, 
and tends toward a mere disorderly mass meeting. 

The fact that such a power exists and that a know- 
ledge of its existence is clearly present to the minds 



88 THE SUPERINTENDENT. 

of scholars and teachers makes an appeal to it a rare 
and exceptional occurrence. Indeed, it is a maxim 
in all wise government that the penalty of the last 
resort should be used with the greatest rarity, and 
only in the most extreme cases, and that there should 
be as many intermediate steps as possible between 
the first slight check of a gentle admonition and the 
full, final blow. But in order that these intermediate 
and gradually increasing steps may be of any avail 
as a check upon the thoughtless or the disorderly, 
that these steps may be effectual in preventing the 
necessity of appealing to that last resort, scholars 
must feel that there is such a resort and that it is 
fully adequate to the end. Just in proportion to the 
clearness of this conviction will be the efficiency of 
the lighter and more gentle class of restraints. Love 
and tenderness and persuasive admonition have a 
tenfold power when coupled with a wholesome fear. 
Let a rude boy know that you have no means in the 
last resort for enforcing respect and obedience, and 
your kind words will be accepted by him as only so 
many acknowledgments of weakness on your part. 
On the other hand, a conviction in his mind that you 
have all needful power at your disposal makes him 
feel that you speak kindly to him because you feel 
kindly — that your manner is not put on to coax and 
wheedle him, but wells up naturally and instinctively 
from a loving and sympathizing heart. 

While insisting thus upon the necessity of power 
as the true basis of all government, let us be careful 



THE SUPERINTENDENT. 89 

not to run into the extreme of making a constant 
show of authority. This needless flaunting of one's au- 
thority into the face of a scholar, like the thrusting of 
the crimson banner before the eyes of the enraged 
animal in the bull-fights of Spain, only provokes re- 
sistance. The human heart naturally rebels against 
whatever has the air of mere assumption, the need- 
less and unprovoked show of power, as it naturally 
acquiesces and stands in awe of a power that is held 
in reserve. There should be in human government, 
as there is in God's, a wise " hiding of his power" 
(Hab. iii. 4) ; not an absolute concealment, but just 
sufficient intimation of its existence to let us know 
that it is there, and that it is there in ample measure, 
yet keeping a wise reserve in regard to the exact 
mode of its operation. Nothing so strikes awe into 
the heart as this calm, confident, mysterious " hiding 
of pow r er." When the Duke of Wellington was at 
the head of affairs in England, there w r as at one time 
a violent insurrectionary spirit among the lower 
classes in London, and organized resistance to the 
government was threatened. The duke brought the 
troops into the city, and it was well know T n that he 
had given them orders, in case the final use of force 
should be necessary, to use the bayonet and solid 
shot, instead of blank cartridges. At the same time 
these troops were kept studiously out of sight, being 
drawn up behind blank walls, but ready to issue 
forth at a moment's notice. Not a soldier was to be 
seen, but every malcontent in that heated million 
8 * 



90 THE SUPERINTENDENT. 

knew that the mysterious thunderbolt was there. Its 
power was magnified ten-fold to their excited imag- 
inations by this very concealment, and in less than 
twenty-four hours their courage had so oozed out 
that those hundreds of thousands of strong men were 
quietly dispersed by a few resolute policemen. 

But what is the power of final resort in the Sun- 
day-school — the ultima ratio of the superintendent? 

Here, it must be confessed, is the weak point in 
our system. The ordinary methods of restraint and 
correction used in other schools are necessarily ex- 
cluded from the Sunday-school. The rod is out of 
the question. We cannot " keep in" after school. 
The one solitary punishment in the last resort is ex- 
pulsion, and the scholar who merits expulsion is for 
that very reason the one who most needs the bene- 
fits of the school. The Sunday-school teacher is a 
missionary, and, like his great Exemplar, his errand 
is not to the whole, but to the sick ; not to the right- 
eous, but to sinners. He goes to seek the erring, to 
save the lost. The child hardened in sin, with no 
home influences to help him, the young outcast and 
thief who has never known the restraints of parental 
authority and who w r ill not submit to yours, is just 
the one of all others whose condition appeals most 
strongly to your sympathy, who most needs your 
help. It is so difficult to induce these young outlaws 
who infest our streets and alleys to come to the Sun- 
day-school at all, and we are so glad when we can 
in any way succeed in bringing them in, that we 



THE SUPERINTENDENT. 9 1 

must needs pause before turning them out. Expul- 
sion in such a case is virtually giving the child over 
to the unchecked dominion of the devil. 

What shall the superintendent do ? 

Dreadful as the result may be to the individual 
scholar, yet when all other means have been tried 
and have failed, and when the example of the scholar 
is producing in the minds of others a defiant disposi- 
tion which it is found impossible otherwise to quell, 
the superintendent is bound, in faithfulness to the 
general interests of the school, to remove a contu- 
macious and persistently disobedient scholar. One 
such act of exclusion, if rightly performed, without 
heat and after full deliberation, will so improve the 
tone of a school as to induce others to attend. One 
expulsion sometimes brings in ten new scholars. 
Children love an orderly school. It draws them 
with a sort of fascination. Even the disorderly and 
the lawless like to see order. It pleases their natural 
sense of what is beautiful and harmonious. Hence 
it is always easy to replenish the ranks of a school 
where order reigns supreme. The better the state 
of discipline in a school, and the higher its general 
tone in regard to duty and order, the more dreadful 
will the sentence of banishment seem to the scholars. 
Expulsion from a disorderly school is no great 
terror to the unruly scholar. In most cases he 
would rather be turned out than not. It is part of 
the fun. 

Expulsion is not a thing •which should be done 



92 THE SUPERINTENDENT. 

publicly, with a pompous announcement from the 
desk and an attempt at dramatic effect. Such a 
course only gets up a scene and makes a hero of the 
offender. When the superintendent finds such an 
act of discipline necessary, the best way of proceed- 
ing is to visit the scholar privately at his home, and 
there, without the presence and sympathy of his 
companions, tell him that it has been found neces- 
sary to request him to discontinue his attendance. 
Such an announcement will sometimes so work 
upon the mind of the culprit as to change his whole 
bearing and make it entirely proper to restore him 
to his position. Even where this does not occur, a 
good effect is produced upon the other scholars. 
The cause of the non-appearance of the dismissed 
scholar is sure to leak out. Some who are deter- 
mined at all hazards to be disorderly will quietly 
withdraw, and the others will be penetrated with a 
wholesome and restraining fear. The writer, in the 
course of a large experience in Sunday-schools, both 
as a teacher and a superintendent, has been obliged 
once, and only once, to proceed to this last resort. 
The effect in that case was happy in the extreme. 
It settled at once and for ever the question of author- 
ity in the minds of the scholars, and enabled both 
him and his teachers to use with proper effect the 
genial influences of love and kindness. It sobered 
finally even the boy himself; not at once, for he con- 
tinued for some months rebellious and defiant; but 
in the end he came seriously to reflect upon his evil 



THE SUPERINTENDENT. 93 

course, and he then re-entered the school " clothed 
and in his right mind." 

12. Making a Programme. 

One of the most important and responsible duties 
of the superintendent is that of making a programme. 
No one of his duties requires the exercise of a sound- 
er judgment, no one affects a greater number of in- 
terests of the school. The making of the programme 
is only another word for disposing of the entire time 
of every scholar and every teacher during the whole 
session, and that not for one Sunday merely, but for 
a whole season, or as long as the programme con- 
tinues in effect. Any error in judgment, therefore, 
in making a programme is far-reaching in its conse- 
quences. On the other hand, however, almost any 
kind of programme is better than none. Those su- 
perintendents who conduct the exercises of a school 
in a loose, unpremeditated way, without any settled 
order of business, have no idea what a waste of time 
and of moral force is involved in their hap-hazard 
proceedings. This is particularly the case with 
"talking" superintendents. Half the, time of the 
school is wasted by their unpremeditated and profit- 
less harangues. 

The programme should be reduced to writing, and 
a copy of it should be posted in some conspicuous 
place where every teacher and officer of the school 
can consult it. If the school is a large one, it is well 
to have the programme printed, so that every teacher 



94 THE SUPERINTENDENT. 

may have a copy. The programme is to the school 
what the time-table of a railroad is to a train, 
and the superintendent, like the engineer, should 
move exactly on time. The efficiency and comfort 
of all his fellow-laborers depend upon his conform- 
ing strictly to his own orders. The teachers, libra- 
rians, secretary, and others make their calculations 
as to the time for completing their work, and the 
superintendent has no right to break in upon the set- 
tled order of business for the purpose of indulging 
in any sudden fancy or caprice. Extreme cases may 
arise, of course, in which the superintendent is justi- 
fied in interrupting the regular business of the school. 
But in all ordinary cases the programme, once set- 
tled, should be supreme, and the superintendent 
should not deviate from it for even a single minute. 

How shall the time of the school session be divided? 
What portion shall be assigned to each exercise? 

Nothing so surely tests one's idea of what the 
school is as this apportionment of its time. The 
"talking" superintendent will naturally make ample 
provision for his harangues. The " singing" super- 
intendent will be equally liberal to the music. The 
writer of the present paragraph confesses to a feel- 
ing of jealousy for the rights of the teacher. Let us 
remember that the institution is not a prayer-meeting 
or a debating society, but a school, and its principal 
function is that of teaching. The time to be assigned 
to the teacher, therefore, is the first and main con- 
sideration, and it should be religiously guarded. 



THE SUPERINTENDENT. 95 

Some time must be allowed of course for other 
things, but let not the teacher's time be sacrificed to 
those things which at the best are only auxiliary. 

But to come to a practical point : What propor- 
tion of the whole time of the session should be given 
up to the exclusive possession of the teacher? I 
answer : If the session is for an hour and a half, give 
the teacher about an hour ; if the session is only an 
hour, give the teacher about three-fourths of it. In 
other words, give to the teacher from two-thirds to 
three-fourths of the whole time, according to the 
length of the session. When the sessions are of the 
length usual in most of our schools, that is, an hour 
and a half, we can afford to be comparatively liberal 
toward the various incidental operations. But where 
the entire session is crowded into one hour, as it 
sometimes is, the superintendent must be sparing to 
the extent of meanness toward everything except the 
actual teaching time. 

Next to the teaching time — next, I mean, in 
amount — is that which should be allowed for devo- 
tional exercises. A safe rule here is to divide into 
two nearly equal parts the time that remains after 
providing for the teaching, and to give one of these 
parts to the devotional exercises and the other part 
to all other operations. 

Under devotional exercises I include: I. The 
reading or reciting of portions of Scripture and per- 
haps also of some formula of doctrine, such as the 
Apostles' Creed ; 2. Singing ; 3. Prayer. These 



96 THE SUPERINTENDENT. 

devotional exercises should be all together, either at 
the opening or at the closing of the school, and not 
divided, as they sometimes are, part at the beginning 
and part at the end. My own preference is to have 
the devotions at the opening. There is no need, as 
there is no time, for two prayers, one at the opening 
and one at the close, or for two singings. The 
scholars and teachers come together, not for a sing- 
ing-school, not for a prayer-meeting, but to study 
God's word. All the singing, the praying, the pub- 
lic reading or recitation of Scripture should be closely 
knit together as one compacted, impressive act of 
solemn worship, by way of special preparation for 
the main work of the hour. This devotional exer- 
cise should in no case exceed fifteen minutes. It 
may include sufficient variety and be brought within 
ten minutes. In my own school the service includes : 
1. The Commandments, recited in concert by the 
whole school ; 2. Singing (two or three verses of a 
hymn) ; 3. The Apostles' Creed, recited in concert 
by the whole school ; 4. The Gloria Patri, sung by 
the whole school ; 5. The Scriptures (twelve to fif- 
teen verses), read by the superintendent; 6. The 
Lord's Prayer, by the whole school ; 7. Prayer by 
the superintendent. No part of the service is hur- 
ried ; every portion is conducted with seriousness 
and deliberation ; and yet the whole occupies just 
twelve minutes. 

What time remains, after providing for the teach- 
ing and the devotional service, belongs to the super- 



THE SUPERINTENDENT. 97 

intendent for addresses, notices and other general 
business. 

No time is here allowed for assembling. Scholars 
and teachers should expect to assemble and to be in 
their places before the time for opening. When the 
hour for opening has arrived the doors should be 
closed and locked, and remain so until the devo- 
tional service is over. Any, whether scholars, teach- 
ers, or visitors, who are late, should remain outside 
until the doors are reopened. By following this 
rule the superintendent is enabled to begin the ser- 
vice at once, without the loss of more than a minute. 
Some superintendents who follow this plan pause 
after closing the doors to call the roll of the teachers. 
But this consumes time, besides being irritating, and 
the end can be gained without either of these results. 
The secretary, without calling the roll, can notice 
by mere inspection the teachers who are present, and 
the fact that they are thus noticed and registered 
will have all the effect desired. 

No time is allowed for the work of the librarian. 
All his work can be done without consuming the 
time of the school, as I shall show farther on. 

No time is allowed for missionary collections*. 
The collection should be made in each class by the 
teacher and enclosed in an envelope, with the 
amount and the name of the class on the outside, 
according to a form prescribed by the superintend- 
ent, so that all the secretary would have to do would 
be to go round and collect' the envelopes, without 
9 G 



98 THE SUPERINTENDENT. 

interrupting any one, and without consuming any 
of the time of the school. 

No time is allowed for notices. These the super- 
intendent must give in the time assigned him for ad- 
dressing the school. 

Five minutes should be allowed for dismission, 
and this will have to be secured by abridging to that 
extent the hour or the three-quarters of an hour ap- 
propriated to teaching. 

With these data before us, let me construct two 
imaginary programmes, one for a school of an hour 
and a half, the other for a school of an hour : 

First Programme (90 minutes). 

Minutes. 
Closing doors and coming to a pause 1 

Devotional service 15 

Change, and getting ready for teaching 1 

Teaching the lesson 55 

Change, and getting ready for the superintendent. . . 1 

Superintendent's (or visitor's) address 10 

Change, and getting ready for dismission e 2 

Dismission 5 

90 
Second Programme (60 minutes). 

Minutes. 

Closing doors and pause 1 

Devotional service 8 

Change, and getting ready for teaching I 

Teaching the lesson < 40 

Change, and getting ready for the superintendent. . . 1 

Superintendent's (or visitor's) address. 4 

Change, and getting ready for dismission 1 

Dismission 4 

~6o 



THE SUPERINTENDENT. 99 

The signal for closing doors, for change, and for 
dismission should be a single tap of the bell, and the 
bell should be used ordinarily for no other purpose. 

13. Opening School Punctually, 

Open exactly at the time agreed upon. Not fifteen 
minutes after the time, not ten minutes after, nor five 
minutes, nor three minutes, nor one minute, but exactly 
at the moment. If there are not half a dozen persons 
in the room besides yourself, still begin. If even you 
are as badly off as Dean Swift once was, when, ac- 
cording to the tradition, he had no one present but 
the clerk, begin. You need not make a joke of it, 
as he did, saying, "Dearly beloved Roger, the 
Scripture moveth you and me in sundry places." 
But if you have even " two or three" present, you 
have a quorum according to the Scripture rule 
(Matt, xviii. 19, 20). Waiting a few minutes for 
stragglers to come in is only an inducement to strag- 
glers to continue in their bad habits. It is, more- 
over, a wrong done to those who come early and 
who want to use all their time. If your school 
begins professedly at nine, and it gets to be under- 
stood that you begin your services in all cases 
exactly at the stroke of the clock, you will have just 
as many present then as you would have a quarter 
of an hour later, if it is found that you usually wait 
a quarter of an hour for laggards to come in. There 
is a certain percentage of every school or congrega- 
tion who may be relied on as coming in late under 



IOO THE SUPERINTENDENT. 

all circumstances. You will not diminish that per- 
centage by habitually waiting. On the contrary, by 
the degree of uncertainty produced you will increase 
it. No opening services are so little disturbed by 
laggardism as those which are known to begin ex- 
actly at the moment agreed upon. 

14. Preparation for the Opening Service. 

Know beforehand fully and exactly what you 
are going to do at the opening. The superin- 
tendent has no right to waste the precious time 
of scholars and teachers by his extemporaneous 
fumbling. When he rings his bell it should be 
a signal not only for undivided attention on the 
part of the school, but for uninterrupted, connected 
service on his part. It is no time then for him 
to stop and hunt up a hymn, or to turn over the 
leaves of the Bible backward and forward in search 
of a suitable passage to read, or to consult with his 
fellow-teachers about any measures to be adopted 
in the school. Then is the moment of execution, 
not of study or deliberation. Whatever is to be 
then done ought to be determined on beforehand, 
even as to the minutest particulars. The superin- 
tendent, quite as much as the teacher, needs to make 
preparation for his work, and to make special pre- 
paration for every session of his school. He should 
select his hymn beforehand, and determine precisely 
whether he will sing all of it or only a part, and if a 
part, which part. He should in like manner select 



THE SUPERINTENDENT. IOI 

beforehand the passage of Scripture, and determine 
exactly the number of verses to be read. If there 
are notices to be given he should make a written 
memorandum of them, and determine in what part 
of the service the notices shall come in. When a 
superintendent is thus prepared, even to minute de- 
tails, for the opening service of the school, he not 
only discharges the duty more effectively, but he gets 
through in half the time. 

15. Giving out Notices in School. 

I have spoken of notices. There is nothing in 
regard to which the conductors of public services, 
whether superintendents or others, make more griev- 
ous mistakes. Nothing in the management of any 
kind of public audience needs more care than giving 
a notice. Yet very many blurt out a notice without 
any premeditation, just as the thought comes into 
their mind, without reference to the time when it is 
given or the words in which it is expressed. Not 
only are the proprieties of the most solemn parts of 
public worship outraged by such a proceeding, but 
the object of the notice itself is totally lost when 
thrust thus unexpectedly upon the attention. 

If you wish to give a school a notice on any point, 
and to have them remember it, you must first call 
deliberate attention to it. So far as practicable, have 
a certain time in the order of exercises when notices, 
if any, are to be given. It is well even to say in 
form, " I am about to give a notice and I wish your 
9 * 



102 THE SUPERINTENDENT. 

attention," and then wait till every eye in the room 
is fixed upon you. 

Do not ordinarily repeat a notice. When the 
children understand that it is your habit to do so, 
they only learn thereby not to listen to you the first 
time you say it, expecting you, as a matter of course, 
to say it over again. If you do repeat a notice, 
always give it in exactly the same words the second 
time as the first time. A variation of the form of 
words, instead of deepening the impression, only 
confuses. It is always safer to reduce your notice 
to writing. Those who are not in the habit of doing 
so are not aware how much uncertainty and vague- 
ness there is in their notices as usually given. 

As to the time for giving notices, there are two 
points in the school session w T hen they are opportune, 
namely, one at the opening exercises, the other at 
the closing, and in both cases the notices should be 
despatched and off the mind of the superintendent 
and of the school before entering upon the devotional 
part of the service. They should never be thrust in 
between the singing and the reading, or between the 
reading and the prayer, nor is it well to tack them 
on after the prayer, thereby dissipating whatever of 
devout feeling may have been awakened by that 
exercise. 

It may seem trifling to dwell so long upon these 
little things. But it is by attention to these little 
things that the superintendent saves the time of the 
school for greater things. 



THE SUPERINTENDENT. 103 

16. Giving Out the Hymn. 

The rarest gift among public men is that of read- 
ing well. Superintendents are no exception. On 
the contrary, it is most painful to listen to hymns as 
they are usually read from the superintendent's desk. 
It is a great misfortune that it is so. Good reading 
would add wonderfully to the effectiveness of this 
part of the service. How the style of reading is to 
be improved it is not easy to say. But, in addition 
to bad elocution, there are some glaring faults of man- 
ner which any superintendent may avoid. 

1. Waiting for the Scholars to Find the Place. 
In the first place, when a hymn is announced as 
about to be read, immediately after the announce- 
ment there should be a pause. The superintendent 
should wait a moment for teachers and scholars to 
find the place, should look round the room to see 
that tney are doing so, and should not begin to read 
until he sees every one in the room ready to follow 
him. Some of my readers, I dare say, will smile at 
my giving so simple a suggestion. You will think, 
perhaps, that no one could be so ignorant as not to 
know this ; or perhaps you may think it trifling to 
make so small a matter a subject of grave comment. 
I can only say my experience differs from yours. 
Nothing is more common than to see the leader of a 
meeting give out a hymn and begin at once to read 
it. If any one in such circumstances will watch the 
operation, he will see the majority of the audience 



104 ? HE SUPERINTENDENT. 

occupied with hunting up the hymn, rustling the 
leaves of their books, asking the place of some one 
of their neighbors, or otherwise diverting attention 
during at least one-half the reading. Indeed, all 
that the auditors aim at in such cases is to be sure to 
get the place by the time the reading is over. In 
the case of children at school, it \% still worse. If 
the superintendent rushes on with the reading of the 
hymn immediately after announcing it, it is practi- 
cally telling the scholars that they are not expected 
to hunt it up, at least not then. The majority of 
them consequently will busy themselves with their 
library books or in talking until the hymn has been 
read through, and will then for the first time begin 
to look for it. They do not seem to think that they 
have anything to do with the superintendent's read- 
ing of it. 

2. Care in Announcing the Place. There should 
be some care in making the announcement of the 
hymn. It should be done in a clear, deliberate man- 
ner, and loud enough for every one to hear. The 
superintendent generally will unconsciously announce 
the hymn in this way when he really expects and re- 
quires all the scholars at once to find the place, and 
waits till they do find it. 

In making the announcement, he should be care- 
ful also to make no mistake in the number of the 
hymn. I once had an experience of this kind. A 
superintendent, who was a man of decided abilities, 
but who .was. negligent of these little matters, in- 



THE SUPERINTENDENT. 105 

tended to give out the 379th hymn. He announced 
the number and commenced at once the reading. 
Whether through not seeing clearly, or more likely 
in consequence of having his mind just at that mo- 
ment mainly upon the hymn and not upon its num- 
ber, he called it the 375th. I watched the effect. 
One person in front of me, finding there was some 
mistake, and happening to catch the first line, turned 
over to the index, and so was able, before the hymn 
was more than half through, to find it. Another not 
far off, finding that it was not the 375th, turned to the 
365th, then to the 385th, then to the 395th, and then 
began to look round the room only to see others in 
a like bewilderment. Another person behind me, 
after trying the 365th and the 385th, concluded his 
ear had misled him as to the first figure, and so he 
industriously hunted up the 275th, and then the 475th, 
and so on. There was not one in ten anywhere in 
sight that succeeded in finding the place. All sat 
perplexed, waiting for the superintendent to get 
through, hoping to catch either the first line or the 
number when they should be announced a second 
time. By a little extra carelessness, the superintend- 
ent, after finishing the reading, announced the hymn 
to be not the 379th, but the 397th. But as he luck- 
ily read the first line over again, the majority of the 
audience succeeded at length in the object of their 
search. I repeat, then,- my remark : Let the super- 
intendent in announcing his hymn be careful to make 
no mistake as to the number. Be careful also to call 



106 THE SUPERINTENDENT. 

out each several figure of the number distinctly. 
You can tell infallibly, if you will only look at the 
children, whether you have been rightly heard or 
not. 

3. Grammatical Blunders. In giving out a 
hymn, some little grammatical blunders are often 
made which cause perplexity. Thus, the superin- 
tendent says, u Sing the first and last two verses." 
Does this mean three verses or four ? If the former, 
he should have said, " the first verse and the last 
two." If the latter, the phrase should be, " the first 
two verses and the last two." There then would be 
no possibility of mistaking the meaning. I have 
heard a superintendent make the announcement thus : 
" Omit the 3d and 4th verses of the 125th hymn," 
instead of saying, "Sing the 125th hymn, omitting 
the 3d and 4th verses." This perhaps would lead 
no one astray, as we may naturally infer that the 
hymn is to be sung. But the expression is awkward. 
It tends to distract the mind. 

4. Reading Just what is to be Sung. In read- 
ing the hymn, it is best to read just those verses, and 
those only, which are to be sung. Omit in reading 
those that are to be omitted in singing. Do every 
minute thing, in short, that will have any tendency 
to prevent distraction of mind. 

5. Giving the Key-note. Besides the musical 
tune, there is in every hymn that is worth singing at 
all a moral tune, which the superintendent should 
endeavor to catch and give. This, I suppose, is the 



THE SUPERINTENDENT. 107 

real object in reading the hymn before singing. If 
the hymn expresses joy, or penitence, or faith, or 
hope — whatever emotion each particular verse is in- 
tended to convey — let the superintendent try to catch 
the very soul of it, and give utterance to it in his 
reading voice. It is the best possible preparation 
and guide for the expression of the same thought or 
emotion afterward by the singing voice. The read- 
ing of the hymn should never be a mere idle and 
unmeaning form. It may be a source of as much 
pleasure and profit to the school as the singing of 
it is. 

6. Looking while Reading. In reading a hymn 
or a passage of Scripture the superintendent should 
give the school the full benefit of his eyes. There is 
something contagious in a look. Get your children 
as much as possible to look you in the eye, and let 
your eyes ever rest calmly and pleasantly on theirs. 
Say not that you cannot do this while reading. Tou 
must do it. You should not undertake to read a 
passage that you are not entirely familiar with. By 
following the passage with your finger as you read, 
so that when your eye returns to the book it will 
know exactly where to fall, you will only have to 
look at the page occasionally, just to take a fresh 
start every second or third line. By this means 
your eyes will be almost as free while reading as 
while speaking extemporaneously. A good reader, 
by means of his eyes and his looks, keeps himself 
just as fully in communication with his audience as 



Io8 THE SUPERINTENDENT. 

if he was speaking to them. The superintendent or 
the leader of a meeting of any kind who has not 
learned the knack of this should learn it without 
delay. He loses half his power with his audience 
by the want of it. The superintendent has never 
really read a hymn to his school unless, while giving 
it utterance with his voice, he has seen the scholars' 
eyes catching fire from his eyes, and has felt his own 
soul simultaneously taking new warmth from the 
reflection of theirs. It is this quick, warm inter- 
change of soul by voice and look v and not the trap- 
pings of office, that gives the superintendent any 
real power among his children. In so small a mat- 
ter as the mere reading of the opening hymn, the 
superintendent may put forth a power and influence 
that shall imperceptibly permeate and leaven the 
exercises of the school for the entire session. He 
gives therein the key-note to the whole service. 

17. Reading the Scriptures. 

No writings, if well read, are so impressive, none 
are so capable of high elocutionary effect, as the 
Holy Scriptures. Yet of all books that are publicly 
read for the edification of the people, none ordinarily 
is read so badly as the Bible. It is not merely that 
public readers fail to give to the words the fulness 
of power and beauty that is in them. It is not 
merely that the reading lacks rhetorical elegance and 
finish, and that Holy Writ as uttered by such per- 
sons ceases to charm and captivate. The bare mean- 



THE SUPERINTENDENT. 109 

ing even is not rendered. The Scriptures are often 
read as one would read a formula in an unknown 
tongue, whose alphabet and pronunciation he had 
mastered, but without having the slightest idea of 
what the words meant, or whether they had any 
meaning. They are often read with an entire per- 
version of the meaning. 

It is no part of my present purpose to lay down 
rules for reading. Yet I do wish to say to superin- 
tendents, and to all who are required to lead the de- 
votions of others, Give earnest heed to this matter. 
You may never learn to give to the Scriptures the 
melting power which they had when coming from 
the lips of Dr. Mason or Elizabeth Fry. You may 
not have the natural gifts of voice and intellect, or 
the opportunities of culture, which those eminent 
persons had. But there is a certain degree of excel- 
lence which you may attain. There are certain 
faults of manner which you may avoid, and which 
you surely will avoid if you desire earnestly and 
truly to give effectiveness to this part of your public 
duties. 

Avoid Formalism. It is unpardonable to read 
the passages of Scripture with which you open 
school in such a way as to give the children the idea 
that it is a mere form, something which is to be gone 
through with, but in which they have no interest. 
Children are quick reasoners, and do not often mis- 
take in such matters. If they get the idea in any 
instance that the superintendent is reading a passage 
10 



HO THE SUPERINTENDENT. 

in the Bible merely because such reading is in the 
programme, a part of the customary routine, and 
that it has no meaning or relevancy to them, the 
chances are that they are right in their impressions 
of the case. The superintendent will find, if he will 
go to the bottom of his own mind, that in his inmost 
thoughts this reading is really not a living process 
of his soul, as it is when he is talking his own 
thoughts to the children. He is doing exactly what 
the children suppose. He is going through a mere 
form. 

Be in Ea?'nest. Now it is not in rules to correct 
the evil of formalism, of which I have been speak- 
ing. The only remedy is for the man to realize 
better what it is that he is about. He must in some 
way learn to feel that it is really a serious thing to 
read to others the words of the great God. Reading 
louder or lower, slower or faster, putting an empha- 
sis on this word or on that, affected starts and grim- 
aces, measured cadences and solemn cant, — none of 
these things reach the case. What is wanted, the 
indispensable requisite, in order that the reading 
shall take hold of the audience, is reality, life. It 
must first take hold of yourself. The moment you 
really feel that you are reading the words of God, 
that you are communicating to your hearers a mes- 
sage from heaven, your feeling will infect them. 
Just in proportion as you feel they will feel. They 
will catch the tone instantly. Nothing is half so 
contagious. If a man is in earnest, whether he is 



THE SUPERINTENDENT. Ill 

reading or speaking, his hearers become earnest. It 
is a law of human nature. 

Study the Passage. Study beforehand the pas- 
sage which you intend to read at the opening. It is 
no easy matter to find out exactly what is meant, 
and all that is meant, by the written words of an- 
other. We are accustomed in every-day intercourse 
to leave a great deal of our meaning to be expressed 
and supplemented by the tone of the voice and by 
significant gestures and looks. When only the 
voiceless, inanimate words are before us, it requires 
for their full comprehension not merely practiced 
skill in verbal and grammatical analysis, but often 
much historical knowledge, and always a vigorous 
imagination, to bring the original circumstances 
fully and vividly before the mind. In the passage, 
John xx. 1 6, for instance, when Jesus turns and says 
" Mary !" it is evidently in that voice of familiar ten- 
derness which says, by its very tone, " Do you not 
know me?" Mary's " Rabboni !" is in like manner 
an expression of surprised, joyful recognition. A 
mere study of the words does not bring out the 
meaning. Imagination must work. The scene 
must stand clearly out before the mind's eye. Then 
only will the voice do its office as a true interpreter 
of this most beautiful passage. Who that ever heard 
that almost despairing wail with which the venerable 
Dr. Archibald Alexander used to utter the cry, u Eloi, 
eloi, lama sabacthani !" but felt that he had received 
a new revelation of the meaning of that mysterious 



H2 THE SUPERINTENDENT. 

utterance ? It was not that Dr. Alexander under- 
stood Hebrew better than thousands of others have 
done. It was because he had meditated upon the 
subject until he had the whole dreadful scene fully 
before him. 

Meditate on It. Meditation implies something 
more than study. Begin, of course, by studying the 
subject carefully. Find out by studious examination 
and reflection the exact meaning of the passage 
and of each particular word in it. Then ponder 
it, until your mind has become fully possessed with 
the ideas and thoughts which it contains. Dwell 
upon it. Turn it over and over on the previous days 
of the week, as you would any grave and weighty 
message that you were preparing to deliver on some 
important occasion. Take as much pains and time 
in preparing yourself to read a passage at the open- 
ing of the school as a faithful teacher would take in 
preparing to teach it. Get your thoughts filled with 
the very things themselves which are spoken of, so 
that when you read you hardly think of the words — 
so that, in fact, you seem to yourself not to be read- 
ing the words, but only the meaning which lies be- 
neath them. It is as when one looks through a 
window at objects in the street. The glass is only 
the medium through which, and unconscious of it, 
he sees something beyond. So by long dwelling 
upon a passage you learn gradually to forget the 
words in thinking of the meaning which they convey. 
You look with your mind's eye through the words, 



THE SUPERINTENDENT. 1 13 

and, forgetful of them, see only the real objects which 
lie beyond. 

When you rise at your desk to read to the school, 
with your own mind thus prepared, you need not 
fear that the exercise will be a dull and formal one, 
either to you or to those who hear you. The prime 
difficulty with superintendents, and with others 
similarly situated, is that they have no adequate con- 
ception of the importance and value of the exercise, 
and they make no adequate preparation for it. 

Reading to One's Self. A member of Congress 
once made an attack upon John Randolph. It was 
a long, dull speech, to which no one apparently 
listened but the man himself who made it. Ran- 
dolph began his reply as follows : " Mr. Speaker, 
while the gentleman was talking I was thinking of 
the first lesson in our old school-book, Corderius. 
c £)uid agis ? What are you doing ? Repeto mecum, 
I am repeating to myself!'" It is exactly the case 
of many who read the Scriptures publicly. They 
stand up indeed in presence of others, but they are 
really reading to themselves. There is no communi- 
cation of thought and feeling going on between 
them and the listeners. There is no interchange of 
looks. There is no play of sympathy back and 
forth. If the reader would not have the feeling that 
he is reading to himself, if he would not give the 
same impression to those who are listening, he must 
not confine his eyes. to the book. He must learn to 
read, and at the same time to look his hearers in the 
10 * H 



114 THE SUPERINTENDENT. 

eyes. Take the word of an old hand at the busi- 
ness. You will never feel any ease or comfort in 
this part of your duty, you will never perform it 
acceptably or profitably to others, until you get the 
knack of looking at the people that you are read- 
ing to. 

Number of Verses. How many verses should be 
read at the opening of the school ? The common error 
here is that of reading too long a passage. Rarely 
read a whole chapter. From twelve to fifteen verses 
is about the length. When the school, or a consid- 
erable portion of it, has a common lesson, it is often 
a good plan to read at the opening the verses which 
constitute the lesson. Where this is not done, but 
the superintendent selects a passage, take something 
which is complete in itself, a single parable, or the 
narrative of one particular event, something which 
will make an impression as a whole, and which will 
not produce a confusion of ideas. 

Some superintendents require the school to read 
verse about. That is, the superintendent reads the 
first verse, the school reads the second, and so on, 
alternating as in the service in the Episcopal Church. 

Keeping the School in your Eye. While the 
scholars are thus reading alternately, or repeating 
after you, use your eyes most diligently. Let that 
calm, quiet look of yours search out every little de- 
linquent who, through indolence or inattention, fails 
to add his young voice to the general volume of 
sound. Do not distract the attention of the others by 



THE SUPERINTENDENT. 1 15 

stopping then to comment upon it, or by calling out 
to the delinquent publicly. Only see him. If pos- 
sible, let him feel that you see him. In the course 
of the session you will have an opportunity of re- 
minding him privately and kindly of his duty. See 
that the teachers respond as well as the scholars. 
Not only the example of the teacher is important as 
an inducement to the scholars, but his voice is a 
guide to them and helps to keep their voices to- 
gether. Do not urge the school to respond loudly. 
What you want is not noise, but concert. You 
want every voice to join intelligently in the service. 
While your own utterance is clear and distinct, yet 
let there be a certain degree of tenderness, a sub- 
dued solemnity, in the tone of your voice. The 
children will be very apt to catch it. They are im- 
itative creatures. If you bluster, they will bluster. 
If you are gentle and devout, they will learn uncon- 
sciously to be the same. 

18. The Opening Prayer. 

I do not propose to speak of prayer in general, 
but only of that particular prayer with which a Sun- 
day-school should be opened. 

If time and forethought are needed to make the 
service short, much more are they needed to make 
it simple. The words must be such as children can 
understand, the wants expressed must be such as 
children feel. Avoid long sentences as well as long 
words. Let each petition, so far as possible, be a 



Il6 THE SUPERINTENDENT. 

single sentence by itself. Beware of circumlocu- 
tions and euphuisms and cant phrases, such as are 
doled out unmeaningly in ordinary prayer-meetings. 
Every school, every class, has wants of its own — 
special, specific wants. Each week brings new 
wants. Have these fixed in your mind beforehand, 
so that you know exactly what you are going to ask 
for when you stand up to pray. If the list of wants 
becomes too long, select those that are most urgent, 
and arrange in your own mind the order in which 
the several petitions shall be presented. Think 
over the terms to be used in each particular request, 
so as not to degrade the subject by using words that 
are trivial and vulgar, and yet be not so refined and 
dainty in expression that the children do not know 
what you are talking about. Let one or more of the 
petitions always be connected with the sentiments 
contained in the hymn and in the passage of Scrip- 
ture read. This knits together the whole opening 
exercise and gives unity and strength to the general 
impression. 

An Example. Among the petitions which would 
be seasonable in almost any Sunday-school are such 
as the following : 

"Help us to keep this Sabbath day holy. May we love 
the dear Saviour more and more. Give us new hearts. 
Make us true Christians. Help us to remember our les- 
sons. Teach us the meaning of the Bible words. Teach 
us how to pray. If we live to grow up, may we become 
good men and women. May every child learn to obey his 
father and mother. May every child be kind to his broth- 



THE SUPERINTENDENT. 117 

ers and sisters. Bless those children who cannot come to 
Sunday-school. Bless those children who have no one to 
teach them. Bless heathen children. Bless all Sunday- 
schools. Bless that dear boy whose mother died last week. 
Comfort his heart and be very merciful to him. May we 
all learn to be still and atte7itive during the school hours. 
May we always be glad when Sunday co?nes. Fill us 
with joy when we sing God's praises. We have just sung 
that children < around the throne of God in heaven'' praise 
thee j help us too to praise thee here upon earth. Forgive 
those who do not learn their lessons. Forgive those 
who swear. Forgive those who lie. Forgive those who 
play on the Sabbath. Forgive those who so7neti?nes stay 
away from Sunday-school and run about the streets. For- 
give those who use bad words. Forgive those who get 
\ angry and fight. May we all be sorry and learn to do 
better. May those two teachers who are sick soon get well. 
Bless all the teachers. Bless our dear pastor. Bless ottr 
fathers and mothers. We thank thee that Jesus died 
for us. We thank thee for this precious Bible. We 
thank thee that so 7nany of us are able to come to school 
to-day. We thank thee that the sun shines, and that we 
have such a pleasant day and such a pleasant school-roo7n. 
We tha7ik thee that we have clothes to wear a7id food to 
eat. We thank thee that we k7iow how to read. Give 
us more knowledge. Teach us how to do good. Help us 
to be ge7itle aiid ki7id. Keep us from bei7ig cross and ill- 
natured. Keep us fro7n bei7ig idle. May we be a comfort 
to our frie7ids. We have just read in the Bible that thou 
carest for sparrows j care for us. Care for our school. 
May so77iebody give us 77iotiey to get a new library. Send 
us 77iore teachers for those classes that have no teacher." 

This is not given a-s a model prayer, but only to 
illustrate what is meant by simple petitions, such as 
will be likely to reach the understanding and the 



Il8 THE SUPERINTENDENT. 

wants of children. In the actual prayers of any par- 
ticular school the petitions will often be much more 
specific than any here given, and they will vary from 
week to week, according to the varying wants of the 
school. If the superintendent in his prayer thus 
comes to the " Father who is in heaven" with the ac- 
tual wants of the school, expressed in a plain, straight- 
forward manner, the children will follow him, and 
the exercise will be one that they will take pleasure in. 
Another Example. But suppose the superin- 
tendent begins in this wise : 

" O thou g7'eat and 7nysterious Being, who inhabitest 
eternity, whose are all the ends of the earth, who alone ' 
dwellest in light inaccessible and full of glory, who77i no 
eye hath see7i 7ior can see, who art, a7id there is none be- 
side thee, Ki7ig of ki7igs a7id Lord of lords, look dow7i i7i 
co77ipassion upon us thy unworthy creatures, who have 
forsaken the fountain of living waters and have hewn 
out to ourselves broke7i a7id leaky cisterns that can hold no 
water j show us how vain a7id futile are sublmiary joys 
a7id pursuits j let not these transitory i7iterests a7id pas- 
sio7is draw us away fro77i those heavenly conte7nplations 
which ought to fill our thoughts j may we rise superior to 
earth a7id its allure7nents, the things of ti77ie a7id sense, 
which perish with the using, and may we cleave to those 
eternal realities which never fade away. In the 77iidst of 
deserved wrath remeinber 7nercy. Send down thy blessi7ig 
on those who7n thou hast placed i7i the responsible position 
of instructors of the young a7id tender 7nind. Bless hi7n 
also who goes out and in before us and breaks to us the 
bread of eve7'lasting life. May his words be as a nail 
d7'ive7i in a sure place, sending down its roots broad and 
deep, and se7idi7ig out its bra7iches like a green bay tree y 



THE SUPERINTENDENT. 1 19 

fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army 
with banners" / / / 

How long is it likely that the children will follow 
such a prayer? Will not the superintendent be to 
them as one that beateth the air ? Will he not be as 
one that speaketh in an unknown tongue? 

The Superintende?zf s Manner. Besides the 
substance of the prayer, there are some things in the 
manner of it that deserve attention. In no one act 
of the superintendent should he be more careful of 
his manner than when he thus attempts publicly to 
lead the supplications of a youthful audience. To 
this end let his manner be subdued and gentle. 
Noisy vociferation, equally with flippant levity, is 
utterly irreconcilable with a devout and humble 
spirit. Above all things, never shout out the name 
of God in a sharp, loud tone of voice. Nothing that 
you can say to enforce the obligation of the Third 
Commandment will have half the effect upon the 
youthful heart that will be produced by your own 
tender, loving tone in breathing the sweet words, 
" Our Father which art in heaven." Though the 
petitions be brief and simple, do not, in uttering 
them, rush on hastily from one to another. When 
the late Dr. Ashbel Green was in the height of his 
popularity as a pulpit orator, one night, in returning 
home from church and mingling with the crowd, he 
unintentionally overheard various comments upon 
the sermon. Among other remarks, one lady said, 
" Oh, don't you admire his pauses !" The lady was 



120 THE SUPERINTENDENT, 

right. There is often strange eloquence in a pause. 
In uttering simple, detached petitions, such as those 
quoted in the first example, there should be a slight 
pause after each, that the thought may rest for a mo- 
ment upon the mind of the hearers, and as if in a sort 
of expectancy of its effect upon His mind to whom it 
is presented. A man will thus pause without thinking 
of it ; indeed he cannot help doing so if he truly real- 
izes what it is to present a series of requests to 
Almighty God. Each request will have a sober, 
separate, deliberate presentation. 

A Devout Pause Before and After. In addition 
to this deliberateness of manner during the prayer, 
there should be a special, solemn pause before and 
after the prayer. Before beginning to pray, the au- 
dience rise, or kneel, or make some change of posi- 
tion. If the audience is large, consisting of several 
hundreds, and especially if they are children, the 
change of position, and the little adjustments of dress 
and person attendant upon it, necessarily take some 
perceptible time. The superintendent must wait 
quietly till the whole movement is completed, till 
the attention which has been thus momentarily 
diverted has returned once more to the service. 
Let him pause till every sound is hushed, and expect- 
ancy reigns supreme. Then let those wonderful 
words, " Our Father which art in heaven," begin to 
fall gently on the ear. 

vSo, too, after the prayer, let there be a pause, as 
if teachers and scholars had been high up on the 



THE SUPERINTENDENT. 121 

mount of vision, and it required some little time to 
break off from that solemn communing. Some 
superintendents and some preachers hardly have 
u Amen" out of their mouths before they are off full 
gallop upon whatever comes next in order. Before 
the audience have resumed their seats, or have had 
time to become composed, a chapter is begun, a 
text is announced, or there is a rush to business of 
some kind. It is needless to say, the solemnity pro- 
duced by the prayer receives a rude shock from this 
indecorous haste. The silent prayer at the close of 
the service in the Episcopal Church is a most beau- 
tiful observance. How much more becoming is this 
than the rattling haste with which some congrega- 
tions rush out of the house of God the moment the 
word u Amen" is pronounced ! 

But to return to the subject. Let the superintend- 
ent and the school learn to attain a quiet, cheerful, 
composed attention before beginning to address the 
great God, and let them also retain that composure 
for a brief space after closing the prayer, and before 
engaging in anything else. There should be no rude 
abruptness either on entering or leaving the pres- 
ence of the great King. 

Concluding Rejnarks. 

If any superintendent, judging by the length of 
these remarks about opening the school, should infer 
the propriety of making his opening services equally 
long, he would make a grievous mistake. I have occu- 
lt 



122 THE SUPERINTENDENT. 

pied more than twenty pages in the description of a 
service which at the longest should not exceed ten 
minutes. But many people forget, or never find 
out, that what requires brief space in action often 
takes long and toilsome hours of patient preparation. 
In fact, the briefer the time for action, the greater 
and more minute must be the preparation. The 
speaker was not astray who apologized for his ad- 
dress being so long, by saying that he had not had 
time to make it shorter. Many people also mistake 
haste for speed. An expert will execute a move- 
.ment with entire composure, and as if he was quite 
at his leisure ; and yet, if you time him, you find that 
he gets through it with extraordinary despatch. 
With what wonderful celerity some of the most 
critical operations in surgery are performed ! Yet 
the operator proceeds with all the steadiness and 
apparent deliberation of one taking an airing. It is 
because in these cases there is really no crude ex- 
temporization. Everything, to the minutest par- 
ticular, is thought of and prepared for beforehand. 

If the superintendent comes to his work of opening 
school without full and special preparation, he will 
be very apt either to spin out to an unreasonable 
length what he has to do, or to rush through it with 
a fatal haste that accomplishes nothing. Every 
mistake of the superintendent is, in its effect, multi- 
plied by the number of those under his care. In a 
large school, say of three hundred scholars, every 
minute during which the superintendent detains the 



THE SUPERINTENDENT. 123 

school unnecessarily makes a loss of three hundred 
minutes, which is five hours. He must study there- 
fore the art of expediting matters. On the other 
hand, entire deliberation and steadiness are abso- 
lutely essential. A jerking, fitful movement is fatal. 
The scholars will detect at once whether the super- 
intendent really knows what he is about, just as the 
steeds before a coach know who it is that handles 
the reins. As the skilful driver has the art of com- 
municating his own impulses, of diffusing his very 
self, so to speak, through the dumb beasts that like 
a single living intelligence yield their wills to his, so 
when the superintendent takes the reins and calls 
the school to order, he must aim to make every one 
in the room feel his touch. He must diffuse him- 
self through the entire mass. He must try to wield 
the thoughts and the willing attention of all. Chil- 
dren, no less than horses, delight to give themselves 
up to the control of a master mind. Like horses, too, 
they are not slow to kick out of the traces the mo- 
ment they detect a want of skill in the driver. Let 
no one expect to wield this power who has not 
studied carefully what he has to do, and who has 
not every particular so perfectly and definitely settled 
in his mind that he cannot by any possibility be 
thrown into confusion and disorder. 

Do not consider me prolix, therefore, if I have 
taken a good deal of space in canvassing the details 
of a service which in its actual performance occupies, 
or at least ought to occupy, a very little time. 



CHAPTER IV. 




THE TEACHER. 

jlHE main work of the Sunday-school is that 
done by the teacher. The present chapter, 
devoted to the consideration of his various 
duties and qualifications, will necessarily be the 
longest, as it is the most important, in the book. 
It is not necessary to follow any particular order in 
this discussion, but the several topics connected with 
the subject will be considered, one after another, in 
such manner as shall seem most conducive in each 
case to some practical result. 

I. The First Qualification. 

Let the teacher ever remember that the great end 
of Sunday-school instruction is the salvation of the 
soul. We would bring the children to Jesus. This 
is the beginning, middle and end of our effort. The 
humble disciple who brings others to the saving 
knowledge of the Lord Jesus is doing a good work, 
though the teachings by which it is done are old- 
fashioned and quaint and behind the times, though 
the teacher may know nothing of the new methods, 

124 



THE TEACHER. 125 

though his class may make no show at anniversaries, 
and may have nothing about it that is novel or pic- 
turesque. 

I am about to give considerable space to the dis- 
cussion of Sunday-school methods. Teachers' in- 
stitutes, model lessons, Sunday-school libraries, 
Sunday-school music, means of registering attend- 
ance, means of securing attention, means of visible 
illustration, — these and similar topics will be com- 
mended to the earnest attention of the reader. I 
feel that too much or too earnest attention cannot be 
given to these topics. At the same time, I desire at 
the outset to recall to the mind of the reader that 
these are but means, and that the end of them all is 
to win souls to Christ. The true, genuine conversion 
of one child by the most antiquated method of teach- 
ing, is a better result than the most brilliant and 
captivating display of skill which yields to the 
Master no harvest of souls. 

I commend the new methods with all my heart. 
I earnestly exhort all Sunday-school teachers to 
avail themselves of every opportunity of studying the 
art of teaching. Observe others, read books on the 
subject, attend institutes, make experiments. Use 
your utmost diligence in these things. But forget 
not that infinitely greater preparation, the fresh bap- 
tism of your own soul by the Holy Spirit. Get your 
own heart all aglow with a burning love for souls. 
Get some realizing sense of the inexpressible value 
of the soul. Let it be no sham, no mere make- 
11* 



126 THE TEACHER. 

believe, when you tell your children of your earnest 
desire for their salvation. This is the first qualifica- 
tion, before and beyond every other, for the office of 
Sunday-school teacher, that he have the same mind 
that was in Christ — an earnestness of love for the 
work that has in it something of agony. 

Love is inventive. Its ends are so inexpressibly 
dear that it stimulates the mind to the highest exer- 
cise of its powers in finding out how those ends may 
be secured. A soul burning with a love like that 
which brought Jesus down to earth will by that 
very passion be raised to a degree of mental power 
of which it had before been deemed incapable. A 
man with this intense, almost consuming, fire of love 
in his bosom, does not, therefore, work without 
means or against means, but the very strength of his 
desires for the accomplishment of the end leads him 
to use with increased diligence all the means within 
his reach. This is the true incentive to invention, 
to study, to toil, to self-denial. The Sunday-school 
work is no mere pastime, no holiday entertainment, 
but real work, requiring for its propelling power 
something more than a love of novelty, or a love of 
applause, or a pleasurable excitement. To carry us 
through triumphantly to the end, to make us perse- 
vering and hopeful under discouragements, to give 
us courage in the face of obstacles and dangers, to 
make us tireless in effort and exhaustless in invention, 
ever willing to learn in order that we may teach, 
ever ready to try a new method when old methods 



THE TEACHER, 12/ 

fail, and never willing to yield so long as any method 
remains untried by which we may bring a lost soul 
back to the fold of Christ — to do all this we need to 
feel, as Christ did, that one soul is really and truly of 
more value than the whole world beside. 

To have this conviction of the value of the soul, 
this burning love for the salvation of souls, is the 
first, the incomparably greatest qualification of the 
Sunday-school teacher. It can only be had in the 
closet of secret prayer, by the direct outpouring of 
the Holy Ghost. But it may be had by every one. 
We must get it, as we get our own salvation, by 
begging for it on our knees, and by continuing to 
beg until we get what we ask. The teacher needs 
to study, needs to read books instructing him in his 
duties, needs to attend institutes and normal classes 
and conventions, needs to talk over with his fellow- 
workers the work that he has in hand. But his 
first need, his greatest need, his most constant, par- 
amount, indispensable need, is to pray. Prayer — 
secret, incessant, importunate prayer — is the one 
means which he may never neglect — prayer, not 
only for his scholars, but for himself, that he may 
have such a baptism of the Spirit as shall set his 
whole being aglow with new life, and shall make 
him feel all the length and breadth and height and 
depth of that awful question, " What is a man 
profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose 
his own soul ? or what shall a man give in exchange 
for his soul?" 



128 THE TEACHER. 

A true impression of the unutterable greatness of 
divine things is the teacher's first qualification. It 
is the gift of the Holy Spirit, obtainable by prayer, 
and free to all. The teacher who has this gift will 
be no laggard in acquiring the others. 

2. Winning Souls. 

The ultimate end of all Sunday-school teaching, 
and of all the means connected with it, as I have so 
often said, is to bring souls to Christ. Of this truth 
there is no serious doubt in any quarter. All Sun- 
day-school men agree in regard to it. It is our 
common bond of union — the first article of our Sun- 
day-school faith. 

But in regard to this cardinal point there are two 
opposing extremes which we need to be guarded 
against. 

The first is the mistake of those who have their 
thoughts so exclusively directed to the end that they 
seem to forget the means. They are like a man who 
expects to win a race by looking intently at the goal, 
while neglecting to see that his horse is properly 
bridled and saddled, and without paying heed to the 
various bends and inequalities of the track. There 
is a mode of dealing with children, in trying to con- 
vert them, which consists in what children them- 
selves expressively call picking at them. Some pious 
people seem to think that they are doing nothing 
toward building up the kingdom of God unless they 
are incessantly exhorting somebody " to escape the 



THE TEACHER. 129 

damnation of hell." A teacher is not necessarily 
neglecting or forgetting the great end of his labors 
because that end is not perpetually on his tongue. 
A teacher may really and truly have the conversion 
and salvation of his scholars in view, who spends 
many an hour in labors in which that end is not 
once named. He has not necessarily lost sight of it 
because he is training his fingers to skill in the use 
of the crayon and the blackboard, because he is 
studying geography and history, because he is read- 
ing books on the theory and practice of teaching, 
and is attending teachers' institutes and normal 
classes. These things are among the means by 
which the Sunday-school workman is equipped for 
his work. Whatever can awaken a greater love for 
the work, or can improve the methods by which it 
is to be accomplished, or can remove obstacles from 
the path of the worker, is important as a part of the 
means. 

But, secondly, there are those who become so ab- 
sorbed in the study and use of the means that they 
virtually forget the end. This is the danger in the 
other direction. Let us, then, accept this exhorta- 
tion, Never to forget what it is that we are laboring 
for. It is not merely to build up large and showy 
schools, it is not merely to have big meetings and 
eloquent speeches. The end of all our labors is to 
win souls for Jesus. Our new school-houses, our 
"normal" methods, our " blackboards" and "insti- 
tutes," our books and pictures and papers, our con- 

I 



130 THE TEACHER. 

sultations and gatherings and teachers' meetings, 
and our improved machinery of every kind, are all 
of questionable utility unless a holy ardor for win- 
ning souls pervades and animates them all. 

If, with all our improved methods and machinery, 
no souls are converted, let us seriously re-examine 
our whole position. If, within the sphere of our 
observation, there is some humble laborer, some 
pious and devoted Mary Gardiner, who without any 
of these improvements is quietly and unostentatiously 
bringing in a continual harvest of souls, let us go 
and sit meekly at her feet as learners. We need not 
give up our improvements. But let us catch that 
living spirit without which all else is mere machinery. 

The conversion of his scholars need not always 
be on the teacher's tongue, but it should be ever in 
his heart. Let it burn there as an unquenchable 
fire. The mistake of some teachers in this matter is, 
not in thinking and feeling too much about it, but in 
talking too much about it. 

While we should not be so much occupied with 
the means as to forget the end, and while also we 
should not disgust and harden our scholars by that 
sort of pointless iteration which becomes wearisome, 
let us also avoid that other and worse extreme of 
never making religion a personal question. There 
is such a thing as being entirely too dainty in this 
matter. Our scholars ought to feel in their inmost 
souls that that which brings us to the class is not 
their amusement, but their salvation. If we fail to 



THE TEACHER. 131 

give them this impression, we are seriously derelict. 
There is something to be done which we have not 
yet done. 

Besides this general impression, which is the 
combined result of our whole manner, the teacher 
should at proper times bring the subject of personal 
religion home to the conscience of each pupil by 
direct individual appeal. Let no natural timidity 
or conscious want of skill keep us from the discharge 
of this imperative duty. A few words, well timed 
and fitly spoken, may bring to a decisive point all 
the labor and preparation of months. For the want 
of such a direct appeal, all the general and indirect 
labor of weeks and months may be dissipated and 
come to nought. 

3. Help from the Great Teacher. 

Sunday-school teachers at the present day, more 
than at any previous time, are pondering the ques- 
tion how they may best qualify themselves for their 
work. Nothing is more evident than the fact that 
there has been among teachers a great awakening 
on this subject. The chief movement in Sunday- 
school matters for the last few years has been in this 
direction. Teachers are zealously studying how to 
teach. Maps, visible illustrations, natural objects, 
blackboards and chalk, model teachers' meetings, 
and model lessons of every grade, have become 
universally familiar. Anything which can help the 
teacher in his work is sought for and welcomed. 



I3 2 THE TEACHER. 

In this general inquiry for help there is one agency 
which should never be neglected. I refer to the in- 
fluence of the Holy Spirit. In the meetings for 
prayer on this subject the aid of the Spirit is indeed 
often invoked, but not for the particular point now 
in view. He is asked to convert the children, to 
open their minds that they may understand and re- 
ceive the truth. This is all very well. But teachers 
need his influence on themselves, and that not 
merely in touching their hearts and creating in them 
greater love for their work and for their children, 
but in giving them skill. We all too much ignore 
the fact that the Holy Spirit is the source of mental 
as well as of moral power. The teacher who 
will may have him as an instructor, to give wis- 
dom and skill, just as surely and effectually as did 
Bezaleel of old in constructing the work of the 
tabernacle. 

It is worth while for teachers to ponder well the 
memorable saying of Christ to his disciples just be- 
fore leaving them, as recorded in the 14th chapter 
of John. Up to that time they had Jesus as their 
daily teacher. But now he gave them to understand 
that he was about to leave them, and they were filled 
with consternation, remembering on how many sub- 
jects they were still ignorant, and feeling that they 
would need continual guidance and instruction. 
Our Saviour assures them that when he has ascended 
to heaven, and is no longer personally present with 
them, another Person of the Godhead shall be sent, 



THE TEACHER. 133 

who will be with the disciples in the place of Jesus ; 
" He shall teach you all things." 

This is doubtless a great mystery — as great as that 
of the Incarnation. Yet it is none the less a fact, as 
sober and practical as it is momentous. God the 
Holy Ghost is in some way present to the hearts and 
minds of men, and does in some way influence 
them, helping them to think as well as to feel, guid- 
ing the judgment, quickening the invention and the 
memory (He shall " bring all things to your remem- 
brance"), making clear what is obscure, giving us 
control over the attention, bringing right thoughts to 
the mind, right words to the lips. This agency of 
the Holy Spirit in its effects upon mental action 
needs to be pondered by teachers. I do not propose 
to explain it. The fact, indeed, does not admit of 
explanation. Yet perhaps an illustration or two 
may make it more appreciable. 

Let it be remembered, then, that action of every 
kind, mental or material, is to be aided and acceler- 
ated, if at all, by force of the same kind with the 
primary force. If a certain amount of weight avoir- 
dupois will not make the scale kick the beam, we 
may produce the effect by laying on the requisite 
number of additional pounds — that is, by adding 
force of the same kind with the original. If the 
flame of one candle does not produce the illumina- 
tion required for a particular effect, the addition of 
a second or of a third will. If we wish to increase 
the speed of a locomotive, we do not whistle to it, or 
12 



134 THE TEACHER. 

whip it, or say to it " get up ;" we add steam. If, 
on the other hand, we wish our horse to travel 
faster, we use a motive addressed to his nature. We 
appeal to his generosity, his pride, or his fear. So 
mental action is influenced and induced by forces of 
the same nature with itself. One mind operates 
powerfully upon another mind, working often, too, 
by mysterious influences that elude analysis. 

The influence of mind upon mind, other things 
being equal, is in proportion to the completeness of 
these three conditions — the fulness of accord and 
sympathy between two minds that are brought into 
contact, the closeness of the contact, and the great- 
ness and power of the influencing and controlling 
mind. A mind fully in sympathy with another is 
by that very circumstance in a condition to be power- 
fully influenced by that other. In like manner, as 
we all know by daily experience, the mind is lifted 
up, enlarged, enlightened, strengthened, by inter- 
course with one of powerful intellect. We all feel, 
too, when wishing to influence any one, that we 
could effect our end the better if we could but get 
our mind into actual contact, as it were, with his 
mind, if we could enter into the very chamber of his 
soul, so as to know certainly and exactly what he is 
thinking of. This indeed we can never do. We 
think sometimes that we come very near to each 
other. But, after all, we never touch. Between my 
mind and yours, between your mind and that of the 
most intimate friend you have in the world, there is 



THE TEACHER. 135 

a barrier, high as heaven, deep as hell, impenetrable 
as adamant. Thus far can we come and no farther. 
We can never enter into the soul of any human 
being. No human being can ever enter into ours. 

Yet there is one Mind, and that a Mind of infi- 
nitely great and transcendent power, to which there 
is no such barrier, and this transcendent, all-know- 
ing, all-powerful Mind is in direct contact with the 
very essence of our minds. Can I influence the 
thinking faculties of a fellow-man, and cannot the 
infinite God, who made those faculties? Can He 
who gives our bodies, all their power of growth and 
strength not give growth and strength to our minors? 

I do not profess to understand how the divine 
Mind acts upon the human mind. I cannot always 
understand how one human mind acts upon another. 
But of the fact, I make no more question than I do 
of the power of flame, of steam, or of gravitation. 

In all earnestness, then, would I exhort teachers 
devoutly to invoke the aid of the Holy Spirit in the 
prosecution of study. If you would acquire that 
mental discipline which is to enable you to study 
and to teach in the very best and highest manner, 
pray ! Call mightily upon God the Holy Ghost, 
who is after all the great educator and teacher of the 
human race. Carry your feeble lamp to the great 
Fountain of light and radiance. Put your heart into 
full accord and sympathy with that of the infinite 
Mind. Wrestle with him mightily in secret, as one 
that feels the burden of a great want. 



I3& THE TEACHER. 

There is sound philosophy as well as religion in 
the utterance of the wise man : "The fear of the 
Lord is the beginning of knowledge." Surely that 
man is not wise who, in cultivating mind, whether 
his own or that of another, neglects to invoke the aid 
of the infinite Mind. 

4. Having an Aim, 

Much of the efforts of good people come to nought 
because those efforts are put forth without delibera- 
tion or distinctness of purpose. The fleet-footed 
youth Ahimaaz is a fair representative of many well- 
meaning people nowadays. There had been a 
great battle, and he was in all haste to carry the 
news to the king. In his zeal he actually outran the 
more sober-minded Cushi, and was the first to enter 
the royal presence. But when asked his tidings, he 
could only say, " I saw a great tumult, but I knew 
not what it was." So the king said to him, " Turn 
aside and stand there." Thus, too often, in their 
zeal to be doing something, people rush out into the 
thickest of the turmoil without knowing exactly 
what it is that needs to be done, and without having 
formed for themselves any definite plan of action. 
Such proceedings are worse than a mere waste of 
energy. They are often positively injurious. Paul 
says: " So fight I, not as one that beateth the air." 
When he gave a blow, he was careful to take aim. 
He wished to hit somebody, and to hit the right one. 
These people who thrust out at random not only 



THE TEACHER. l$] 

beat the air ; they often hit and hurt the very ones 
whom they seek to befriend. 

The teacher, of all persons, and the Sunday-school 
teacher, of all teachers, should seek distinctness of 
aims. The work is one in which mistakes are so 
easy and so mischievous. Children, in consequence 
of their inexperience and their pliability, are more 
easily led astray than grown people. The interests 
at stake are more momentous than those which con- 
cern merely the loss or gain of money. Another 
thing which makes it particularly important that 
care and right methods should be used, is that 
the Sunday-school work is not so well organized 
as the work of the week-day school. In a well-or- 
ganized public school a bungler has not half the 
power of mischief that he would have in a Sunday- 
school. 

It is the duty of every teacher, therefore, to spend 
some time in reflection. Less action and more 
thought is sometimes the true wisdom. If the 
teacher would have a full measure of success in his 
work, he should occasionally pause, and take time 
for consideration. He should fix upon certain defi- 
nite ends to be accomplished, and then keep these 
steadily before him. 

What are some of the aims that the Sunday-school 
teacher should have distinctly in view? or, to vary 
the expression, what are some of the things which 
he should aim to bring about? I will indicate some 
few of these, without undertaking, of course, to ex- 
12* 



I3 8 THE TEACHER* 

haust the list, and without reference to the relative 
importance of the topics named. 

1. Regularity of Attendance. A teacher should 
aim to secure a regular attendance of his pupils. 
How this is to be done is another matter. The point 
I now make is that it should be one of the things at 
which the teacher should distinctly and deliberately 
aim. The means will vary with varying circum- 
stances. That which will answer with one class 
will not answer with another class. One teacher 
has means at his disposal that another has not. 
What I urge upon every teacher is to fix this end in 
his mind, and exhaust every means at his disposal to 
accomplish it. One thing, however, may be as- 
sumed as certain : the end will never be accom- 
plished by scolding. A gentleman of my acquaint- 
ance had a Bible-class in the city of New York. 
On assuming the charge, he adopted the following 
plan. Whenever a pupil was absent, he invariably 
called at the scholar's home to inquire into the cause, 
and if possible on the very day that the absence oc- 
curred. The consequence was that absences, except 
for serious and satisfactory causes, were entirely bro- 
ken up. The plan was completely successful, and 
after the first few Sundays gave him very little trou- 
ble. The scholars got so into the habit of coming 
regularly that he rarely had calls to make. 

2. Study of the Lesson. A teacher should aim to 
secure from every scholar a study of the lesson. The 
facts on this subject are discouraging, almost alarm- 



THE TEACHER. 139 

ing. It is no exaggeration to say that more than 
half the children who attend Sunday-school go with- 
out any preparatory study of the lesson. I do not 
say that even in such cases they learn nothing or get 
no good. They may learn something from hearing 
others recite and from the explanations of the 
teacher, even if they have not studied the lesson at 
home. But the good accomplished is small indeed 
in comparison with what might be done were there 
the proper amount of home study. How this home 
study is to be secured I do not undertake now to say. 
All I say to the teacher is, aim at it. Persevere in 
your aim. If one method fails, try another. Give 
the matter some thought and consideration. Use 
your invention. One thing, however, you may de- 
pend upon. If you let the matter take its own 
course, unless you are more fortunate in your pupils 
than most teachers, you will rarely find your class 
decently prepared on the lesson. 

3. Maintaining Order, The teacher should aim 
to keep order in his class. How this is to be done 
it would require many pages to show. Whole vol- 
umes, indeed, have been written upon it. One thing 
only I say about it now. The very first step toward 
the maintenance of order is for the teacher to make 
up his mind that the thing must be done. Necessity 
is the mother of invention. Let the necessity first of 
all be admitted, distinctly, fully. Means will follow. 
Many teachers unfortunately seem to be entirely pur- 
poseless on the subject. They leave the -matter to 



140 THE TEACHER. 

the chapter of accidents, or they leave it to the poor, 
overburdened superintendent. Let every teacher un- 
derstand that in this thing aiming at the end is half 
the road toward reaching it. The first rule for keep- 
ing order is, resolve that you will have it. Fix it 
definitely in your mind as a thing to be done by some 
means ; then revolve in your mind what those means 
shall be. 

The burden of maintaining order does not rest on 
the superintendent alone. It is a joint responsibility. 
Each teacher ought to hold himself responsible for 
the order of his own class. Nearly all that has been 
said of the superintendent on this subject will apply 
to the teacher. The teacher, however, comes into 
closer and more immediate contact with individuals. 
His is a contest hand to hand, and he will soon find 
that either he or his scholars must rule. This rule 
must be real and no sham. But it need not be harsh. 
It need not be ostentatious. The less show of gov- 
ernment, so there really is government, the better. 
In the asylum for the insane, the windows are se- 
cured by iron bars and the furniture is made of iron, 
so that it cannot be broken, and there is no possibilty 
of escape. But the furniture is all painted to look 
like wood, and the windows seem to have merely a 
light, graceful lattice-work. Let the teacher, even 
when he has to resort to what almost amounts to re- 
straint, be as gentle about it and make as little show 
of it as possible. You may give a command with- 
out putting it in the imperative mood. " Will you 



THE TEACHER. 141 

please?" has the form of a request; and when the 
boy does please, he seems to be doing a favor, and 
yet there has been a real putting forth of authority on 
the one side and a yielding of obedience on the other. 
Remember, too, that the forms of politeness always 
inspire children with respect. But there must be no 
make-believe about it. A group of children have a 
wonderful quickness at seeing through any kind of 
shams. 

It will help the teacher in keeping his class in 
order if he will be careful to sit in such a position 
that he can at all times see all the members of his 
class. In some schools, where semicircular benches 
are used, it is not uncommon to see a teacher place 
himself so near the scholars at the centre of the seat 
that those on the extreme right and left are entirely 
beyond the reach of the teacher's vision. In fact 
they are behind him. 

The power to govern children does not come by 
delegation. Scholars mind you, if at all, not be- 
cause the superintendent or their parents have told 
them they must mind you, but because it is in you to 
be minded. This power over children is a personal 
attribute, inherent, incommunicable. The first ele- 
ment in it is a strong will. You must resolutely de- 
termine to carry your point. The next element in 
importance is a persuasive manner, and the best way 
to bring about this persuasive manner is to cultivate 
a love for children in your heart. Without this love 
in your heart all your smiles and your bland words 



H 2 THE TEACHER. 

will be sham, and will be seen to be such by the 
children. These two ingredients, love and firmness, 
are the main sources of the teacher's power. 

4. Aim to Teach Something. Let the teacher aim 
distinctly to teach something. This may seem a very 
simple rule, hardly worth uttering. Yet many make 
a serious mistake just here. They occupy the 
teacher's chair, they go through a certain routine of 
duty from week to week, but they do not teach. 
Let it be remembered that talking is not necessarily 
teaching. Hearing recitations is not teaching. Teach- 
ing is making some one know what he did not know 
before. Let the teacher, when the hour is over, ask 
himself this question : Do my class know anything 
which they did not know before? or have they 
merely exhibited to me what they had learned in 
preparing the lesson? Have they gone away with a 
distinct, positive addition to their scriptural know- 
ledge? This will be found a searching and critical 
question, and the teacher who can answer it in the 
affirmative will find himself surely gaining a hold 
upon his scholars. Nothing so effectually secures 
good attendance as the consciousness on the part of 
the pupils that they are learning. But the teacher 
w T ho would reach this end must aim at it with dis- 
tinct purpose, and must habitually raise the ques- 
tion, whether he has really ,been teaching. If he 
does not, he may depend upon it that much of his 
labor is going to waste. He is working, but doing 
nothing. 



THE TEACHER. 1 43 

5. Aim to Teach Something Additional Every 
Sunday. The mistake of some teachers is that they 
act fitfully. They get hold of a new thought now and 
then, and lavish their gifts of instruction upon the class 
for a while, but the stream soon runs dry. A dreary 
interval of drouth and dearth succeeds. I have known 
teachers, gifted and brilliant, who would thus hold 
a class delighted for a single Sunday, now and then, 
but who, for want of method and persistence, failed 
in the long run. It is not the large gains, but the 
steady gains, that make rich. There is a wonderful 
power in simple addition. The teacher must, in 
this sense, act on the principle of the miser. Every 
week have some new thought or fact or illustration 
for your class. Let them get unconsciously into the 
habit of feeling that they can never be absent with- 
out losing something. The amount of new matter 
contributed each week may not be large. You had 
better not attempt to make it large. Only be sure 
that each week you teach your class something that 
they did not know before, and you will be surprised 
at the end of a year to see how much they have 
grown in knowledge. You will find, too, that your 
own old stock of ideas is running out, and you will 
need to keep replenishing yourself. If you are to 
teach them something fresh every week, you must 
every week have something fresh yourself. 

6. Aim to Teach Sojnething to Every Scholar. 
This is the hardest point of all, and the one least 
frequently attained. Every class has some scholars 



144 THE TEACHER. 

who are dull, inattentive, indolent, perhaps posi- 
tively perverse. Every class has also some of ex- 
actly the opposite character to that just described. 
The temptation is strong to give one's time to these 
bright, studious, loving pupils, to the neglect of the 
others. It is such a pleasure to teach the one kind, 
it is such a toil to teach the other. But such a 
course is not wise husbandry. The farmer who 
would gather a large return from his acres does not 
content himself with having a few heavy ears here 
and there. What he aims at is to have some sub- 
stantial returns from every foot of soil. The droop- 
ing and sickly plants are the ones which before all 
others receive his care. The hardy and vigorous 
plant will thrive anyhow. So with the bright 
scholar. You are almost sure he will learn. Bend 
your efforts, then, to get a good return from the dull 
boys and girls. If you succeed with them, you will 
not fail with the others. If, on the other hand, there 
is any child in your class who habitually learns 
nothing, depend upon it, that child will soon drop 
out of your class. The very best method for pre- 
venting the loss of scholars is to see that every 
scholar every Sunday learns something from you. 
A class in which this is done will be always full. 
Old scholars stick to it, new scholars are glad to get 
into it. But to secure such an end, the teacher will 
find that he has need not only of making it a special 
aim, but a subject of much special study. He must 
acquaint himself with the disposition and the intel- 



THE TEACHER. 1 45 

lectual condition of each scholar, so that even in pre- 
senting the same truth to his class, he must have 
various modes of doing it, one suited to one pupil 
and one suited to another, and he must keep at it 
until every one is reached* 

7. Aim to Make your Instructions Scriptural. 
The Bible is our text-book in the Sunday-school. The 
teacher is not fulfilling his mission who occupies the 
hours of the Lord's day in telling anecdotes and 
amusing the children with entertaining stories. 
Children may be held in rapt attention all the hour, 
and yet go away no wiser in Bible knowledge. 
Where an apt story or illustration will not only gain 
attention, but make a Bible truth plainer to the 
child's apprehension, or fix it deeper in his memory, 
the use of such a story or illustration is commendable. 
But in our Sunday-schools we have a great deal of 
story-telling which has no end beyond merely keep- 
ing the children entertained. There is also occa- 
sionally a teacher who aims to gain the attention of 
his scholars by giving them curious scientific and 
literary information. The scholars are entertained 
and pleased, and the knowledge gained is of a kind 
that is innocent and even honorable. But it is not 
that for which the Sunday-school was instituted. 
The teacher should aim to see not only that his class 
is learning something, that they are learning some- 
thing every Sunday, that every one of them is learn- 
ing, but also that they are adding to their know- 
ledge of the sacred Scriptures. 
13 K 



I4 6 THE TEACHER. 

8. Besides a Knowledge of the Meaning of the 
JBible, aim to get your Pupils to Store up a Por- 
tion of its Very Words. In our Sunday-schools, 
and in all our schools in these days, we are going 
into the extreme of neglecting the cultivation of the 
memory. Childhood is the time when this faculty 
should receive special, cultivation and development, 
and in the whole range of studies to which a child is 
called, there is none that gives so precious a field for 
the selection of passages suitable for this purpose. 
I do not advocate setting children to committing to 
memory whole books of the Bible. If it were practi- 
cable for them to know the whole Bible by heart, this 
plan would be less objectionable. But as the portion 
of the Bible which any child can commit is compa- 
ratively small, the portions thus learned should be 
selected, and the value of the acquisitions will 
usually depend very much upon the care and judg- 
ment of the teacher in making a selection. A 
teacher should go over the Bible for this very pur- 
pose, and mark passages suitable to be committed 
to memory, so that he can direct a child at once to 
a verse or verses proper to his particular case. It 
would be a great gain if we paid more attention 
than we do to the book of Proverbs. A few of 
these priceless maxims — worldly wisdom coined in 
heaven's mint — stored away in the mind of the child, 
might save the man from many a ruinous business 
mistake. Psalms, parables, the Sermon on the 
Mount, short summaries of doctrine from the Epis- 



THE TEACHER. 147 

ties, etc., should be thus committed. The Bible is 
full of passages, sometimes a single verse, some- 
times a paragraph, just fitted for storing in the mem- 
ory. Teacher, do not neglect this precious oppor- 
tunity. Aim to secure from every scholar, every 
week, the committing to memory of some portion 
of God's holy word. 

9. Aim at the Conversion of your Scholars. 
Until this is accomplished the work is incomplete. 
Attendance, lessons, order, everything, is subord- 
inate to this, and mainly valuable as an auxiliary to 
this. " How shall I bring this child to the saving 
knowledge of Jesus Christ ?" is the burden of the 
true teacher's heart. Not " How shall I make him 
well-mannered?" or "How shall I, by inculcating 
habits of order and industry, improve his social 
condition ?" or " How shall I preserve him from 
sickness or disease?" but, "How shall I save his 
soul from everlasting death? — how shall I snatch 
him as a brand from the burning?" 

Teacher, keep this great aim ever before you. 
Seek the conversion of your children, not in the un- 
certain hereafter, not as something to be gained by 
them when they become men and women, but now. 
Every week, seek their conversion that very week. 
Seek it, not in the spirit of dictation to the Almighty, 
not in the spirit of discontent, but in earnest, im- 
portunate, agonizing prayer. Seek it with unutter- 
able longing. Seek it in hope, as something to be 
expected. Seek it with persevering courage against 



148 THE TEACHER. 

every disappointment. Seek it in the use of every 
appropriate and available means. 

Will Sunday-school teachers, will parents, will 
the church, ever really wake up to the fact that chil- 
dren may be converted just as easily as grown 
people, nay, far more easily? Will the time ever 
come when the means and energy put forth for the 
conversion of children shall be truly commensurate 
with the results which labors for the young ordinarily 
produce? We do something, indeed, in their be- 
half in the family and in the school. Yet after all, 
down deep in the heart of the Christian Church is 
the yet unshaken belief — not expressed, perhaps — 
that " Youth is not the time to serve the Lord." 
Notwithstanding all our sayings and preachings to 
the contrary, we involuntarily think of adult age as 
the time when people are expected to be converted. 
We admit that children may become Christians. 
But when a case does occur, we regard it rather as a 
marvel, as something out of the common way. Is 
there not an enormous practical delusion on this 
subject? Is it not one of Satan's most gigantic de- 
vices to cheat the church out of some of the richest 
parts of her inheritance? Has the church, have 
parents and teachers, anywhere, gone to work in 
downright earnest, as they would do in any similar 
case where a temporal or a worldly interest was at 
stake ? 

The several aims here pointed out are all plain 
and practical. No one who wishes can be at a loss 



THE TEACHER. 149 

to know whether or not he reaches them. I recom- 
mend to the teacher every Sunday evening to make 
a written register of progress. Let him interrogate 
himself honestly how far he has that day succeeded 
in each, and in what particulars he has failed. This 
record will doubtless show many failures. But it 
will help wonderfully to keep him to his work, and 
he will ere long find himself substantially and surely 
reaching what he aims at. 

5. The Difference between Sunday-school Teach- 
ing and Teachiitg in other Schools. 

In many things teaching is the same, whatever be 
the subject, the time, or the character of the pupil. 
The very essence of teaching — which is simply caus- 
ing one to know — is and must be the same under all 
conditions. While admitting this to its fullest ex- 
tent, I think it important also to note that, in many 
of its processes, teaching is a most variable art. One 
will make a woeful mistake who undertakes to teach 
children as he would teach adults, to teach in the 
Sunday-school exactly as he teaches in the weekday- 
school, or to apply to the teaching of religious truth 
all methods that may be proper and right in teaching 
arithmetic and geography. 

What are some of the things in which Sunday- 
school teaching differs from other teaching? 

1. In the first place, we can use none of the or- 
dinary school penalties for compelling attendance, 
attention or study of lessons. Other teachers may 
13* 



15° THE TEACHER. 

or may not have the affection of their scholars. But 
to the Sunday-school teacher it is essential. With- 
out the love of his scholars he can do nothing. This 
is his only hold upon them. This is the silken rein 
by which he must draw them. He may curb them 
to some extent by that natural authority with which 
God has clothed some minds as their inalienable 
birthright. But beyond this he cannot go. He must 
make up his mind, therefore, to be content in many 
cases with intellectual results far short of what he 
obtains from pupils of a like grade on other days of 
the w T eek. Not always, however. Love is a great 
worker. Under its influence, with no other prompt- 
ings, a pupil will sometimes achieve a progress 
truly astonishing. But these are special cases. In 
the main, children will not learn their Sunday les- 
sons with that fulness, exactness, and regularity 
which are expected, and which may be effectually 
required of their lessons on the other days in the 
week. Let the Sunday-school teacher aim, indeed, 
to secure lessons of the very best and highest charac- 
ter. But if he comes short of this high standard, let 
him not be discouraged, or think that his teaching is 
a failure. 

2. In the second place, religious truth, which is 
the subject of Sunday-school instruction, is far more 
directly practical than the truth' or knowledge which 
forms the subject of other teachings. A youth in 
the weekday-school studies a passage in Shakespeare 
or Milton for the sake of tracing its grammatical 



THE TEACHER. 15 1 

construction, or its poetical beauty, or the force of 
its argument, or the derivation and power of par- 
ticular words and phrases, or the historical allusions 
and parallels. He solves a question in algebra or 
arithmetic. It is a mere mental gymnastic. It has 
served its main purpose when it has given him in- 
tellectual exercise, and the intellectual strength and 
acumen which are the legitimate fruit of that exer- 
cise. But far different is the spirit in which he 
should approach the study of any scriptural subject. 
The parable of the Prodigal Son may, indeed, exer- 
cise his intellect and his fancy, and his power of taste 
and judgment, as much as any work of art. His 
main object and aim in the study, however, is not 
mental cultivation, but the practical application of 
the parable to his own conduct and condition. What 
does the great Teacher mean for me in this parable ? 
Wherein am /like this prodigal? How am I to 
act in view of these teachings? Noah's flood, or the 
destruction of the cities of the plain, finds its chief 
interest as a Sunday lesson for us, not in its geolog- 
ical explanations or history, but in its character as a 
religious truth — an alarming demonstration to the 
conscience that God's Spirit will not always strive 
with man. All Scripture is intended for the instruc- 
tion of man in practical godliness, and we miss the 
main intention of any Sunday lesson when we secure 
only an intellectual product. We aim, indeed, to 
secure this, but only as a means of securing some- 
thing infinitely, transcendently greater. 



152 THE TEACHER. 

Here is an important distinction which teachers 
would do well to ponder. Do not teach the Gospel, 
or the Acts of the Apostles, or any part of Holy 
Writ, as you would teach a page in geography, or a 
chapter in the history of the United States. A clear 
apprehension of the facts and of the import of the 
language used is, of course, the first requirement in 
Bible study. But that is only a preliminary step to 
the main lesson. The Bible student is not unlike a 
soldier on the field of battle who happens to be a 
foreigner unacquainted with the language. First of 
all, he must learn the import of the word of com- 
mand. But the soldier does not rest there. The 
command is something to be done as well as known. 
So all Bible knowledge, so far as it is religious 
knowledge at all, and a fit subject for Sunday study, 
is practical knowledge. It is something to be done. 
It is something which employs the intellect only as 
an avenue for reaching the conscience. 

3. In the third place, in the Sunday-school, care 
should be taken, more even than in the weekday 
school, to store the memory. This is not a differ- 
ence so much in kind as in degree. In all teaching 
it is important, after certain results are reached and 
clearly established, to store them up in the mind in 
the form of rules, maxims or principles. It is well 
to commit to memory the exact words in which 
weighty truths have been expressed by the great, 
leading minds of the race. But in the Bible we 
have the most momentous truths expressed in the 



THE TEACHER. 153 

words of God himself— the truths of salvation in the 
words of Him who is the author of salvation. The 
young cannot be too diligent in treasuring up these 
precious words in the memory. What a fund of 
practical worldly wisdom is contained in the prov- 
erbs of Solomon ! What priceless texts for every 
emergency of religious experience in the psalms of 
David ! What words of consolation, of warning, of 
prayer, of -faith, of hope, in the Gospels and the Epis- 
tles ! Everywhere in the Bible, tucked away often 
among mere historical or ceremonial details, are pre- 
cious phrases, like detached nuggets of virgin gold, 
which should be seized upon and laid up for use. 
Of course, in studying the Bible, we proceed in many 
particulars as we do in other studies. But, in my 
opinion, there is no study in which we should use 
the memory so freely and so largely. 

I fear there has been on this point a serious and 
hurtful departure from the good old ways. I fear 
there is not as much as there once was of commit- 
ting to memory the sacred Scriptures. Will teachers 
and parents look to this matter ? 

6 . Class- Teach ing. 

By class-teaching I mean teaching a considerable 
number at once, as distinguished from teaching one 
at a time. It is not uncommon to see teachers with 
large classes who yet never do any real class-teach- 
ing. Such a teacher will hear Johnny say his verses, 
and perhaps give him some explanation of their 



154 THE TEACHER. 

meaning, will then hear Jimmy say an answer in 
the catechism, then Charley say a hymn which he 
has learned, and so on, taking one scholar at a time, 
until the class is finished. This is teaching in a 
class, but it is not class-teaching. The distinction is 
something more than a mere play upon words. It 
involves facts of the gravest import. I fear there 
are more teachers following the individual method 
than superintendents generally are aware — teachers, 
I mean, who never teach a class as such, but give 
instruction successively and separately to one after 
another in a class. 

I hold it to be the duty of the superintendent to 
look into this matter by personal observation, and 
wherever a teacher is found who can teach by the 
individual method only — that is, one at a time — I do 
not say the superintendent should dispense with the 
services of such a teacher, but he should feel bound, 
so far as this method is allowed to prevail in his 
school, to provide as many teachers as there are 
scholars. Every scholar has a claim to instruction 
all the time he is in school. If a teacher has ten 
scholars and follows this method with them, he 
has what appears to be a class, but it is really ten 
classes. 

Class-teaching consists in making a unit of all the 
scholars, no matter how many, who are under one 
teacher. The ability of teachers differs in this. One 
teacher can make a unit of twenty, another of ten, 
another of five, another of three, while some, and 



THE TEACHER. 1 55 

their number is larger than is generally supposed, 
can teach but one, or at the most but two, at a time. 
Nothing is gained by assigning to a teacher more 
scholars than he can keep occupied all the time. 
The school may have a prettier appearance, perhaps, 
when the scholars are evenly distributed by sevens 
or eights all over the room. But for the real benefit 
of the scholars, it is better to assign to some teachers 
but one or two scholars apiece, and to others twenty 
or thirty, if thereby all the scholars are fully occu- 
pied all the time. A teacher is overloaded the mo- 
ment he has a single scholar more than he can keep 
fully occupied. Every teacher should ascertain, or 
the superintendent should ascertain for him, exactly 
how many he can thus weld into one, and every 
scholar added to the class after it has reached that 
limit should be considered as so much material 
wasted. 

Of course there may be real teaching and good 
teaching by the individual method. Rich people 
sometimes employ a private tutor to devote his whole 
time to the instruction of one child. But such in- 
struction is enormously expensive. Besides that, ex- 
cept in special cases, it is less valuable to the pupil 
than instruction received in genuine class-teaching. 
In the latter, the pupil receives a stimulus from his 
fellows which is wanting in the other case. Recit- 
ing by one's self to a private tutor is dull and stupe- 
fying work compared' to the brisk, breezy, bracing 
exercises of a class. 



156 THE TEACHER. 

It is not an easy task to hold at all times the atten- 
tion of an entire class, so that whatever the teacher 
says to one is said equally to all, and whatever any 
one scholar says is heard and shared in by all. Yet 
nothing short of this can claim to be class-teaching. 
The entire intellectual activity of both teacher and 
scholars is concentrated upon a single point, and this 
concentration, like that of the sun's rays brought to 
a focus by a convex lens, gives heat as well as light. 
Truths glow with brightness and shine into the soul 
with a certain piercing vigor when a considerable 
number of minds, all wide awake, are united as one 
mind in the examination of a subject. To produce 
this concentration, to weld five, or ten, or twenty, or 
fifty young minds into one, to arrest at once the least 
wandering of attention, requires no little skill. It is 
the first and most indispensable requisite in the 
teacher's art. 

The object of classification in a school is to en- 
able the teacher to do class-teaching. The more 
thoroughly this object is accomplished, the greater 
will be the general improvement and efficiency of 
the school. No teacher should rest contented until 
he has achieved some success in this line. It is a 
matter in which improvement is capable of almost 
infinite degrees. The best way for one who is con- 
scious of being deficient in this respect is to begin 
with a small number and increase it as you acquire 
the power. When you have learned to control 
thoroughly the attention of five scholars, try six. 



THE TEACHER. 157 

When you are master of six, try seven. Let it be 
your ambition to see how many young minds you 
can wield as one, remembering that you multiply 
yourself by every one added to the number of your 
scholars. If during the entire hour you can wield 
the undivided attention of twenty pupils, you are 
virtually making yourself twenty teachers. You are 
at least making yourself equal to twenty of those 
who teach by the individual method. 

To gain this power, the first requisite is a resolute, 
determined aim to do it. Mere wishing it or fretting 
about it will not compass the end. Set about it in 
good earnest, and be willing to make some sacrifices 
in order to accomplish it. Entire, absolute famil- 
iarity with what you are going to teach is another 
requisite. The teacher who wishes to control the 
attention of a class must know the lesson so thor- 
oughly as to be able to teach it without book. This 
is an inexorable condition of success. Close your 
book before you begin to teach if you wish to put 
forth any teaching power. Thus only can you bring 
your mind into living contact and sympathy with the 
minds before you. 

7. How to Question a Class. 

Skill in the art of questioning is a qualification 
for the teacher's office of the very highest importance. 
In the long catalogue of things required there is 
hardly one that should be set higher. It cannot, 
therefore, be too much insisted on or too much dis- 
14 



I5 8 THE TEACHER. 

cussed. I shall offer a few thoughts on the subject 
for the consideration of teachers. 

i. In the first place, the teacher who expects to 
excel in this particular must make up his mind that 
the gift referred to is really a most valuable and im- 
portant attainment. No other quality can supply 
its place in the peculiar power of awakening, guid- 
ing and moulding the minds of others. Eloquence 
and learned discourse can do much in producing an 
impression, and of course are not to be underrated. 
But the peculiarity of the influence exerted by skill 
in the art of questioning is that it goes directly to the 
very roots of the soul, so to speak. It operates in 
the formation of opinion, in the growth of intellect- 
ual power, and in the increase of knowledge, in a 
way altogether peculiar to itself, with a directness 
and energy unattainable by other methods of instruc- 
tion. The prodigious influence exerted by the late 
Dr. Archibald Alexander, of Princeton, upon the 
mind of the Presbyterian Church in the United 
States was not due so much to his lectures in the 
theological seminary, for he lectured comparatively 
little, nor to his published theological works, which 
are lamentably few, but to his wonderful power as a 
catechist. In the theological class-room it seemed 
as if there was not a thought or a perplexity in the 
mind of any student which did not lie open to the 
penetrating ken of the professor, not a power of 
thinking which the professor did not stimulate into 
lively action. He seemed to touch, as if with the 



THE TEACHER. 159 

wand of an enchanter, all the hidden springs of 
thought, and whatever of mental power was in a 
man came forth. It was thus he moulded and de- 
veloped all those great minds which have exerted, 
and which are now exerting, such a controlling in- 
fluence upon the destinies of the Presbyterian Church 
in America. Dr. Alexander, like Socrates among 
the ancients, has written comparatively little. But 
his power as a teacher was second to none, not even 
to that of Socrates, and it will go on perpetuating 
and reproducing itself for ages to come. 

It is not expected, of course, that every teacher 
will have the gifts of Dr. Alexander. But his exam- 
ple is worthy of study as showing the kind of excel- 
lence desired, and also the prodigious results of 
which it is capable. It is no ordinary matter, like 
some of the mechanical details of the teacher's work, 
but something of first-class importance. 

2. In the second place, the teacher, after having 
risen to a due sense of the importance of this gift 
and a corresponding desire for its attainment, should 
define clearly in his own mind the true object of the 
art of questioning as a teaching power. It is not 
uncommon to see teachers, in asking questions, pro- 
ceed as if the sole object of the exercise was to find 
out and record how much the scholar had learned 
before coming to the class. Such a teacher uncon- 
sciously puts himself in the attitude of a public pros- 
ecutor or of a detective policeman. His questions 
are formed with a view to find out whether the pupil 



160 THE TEACHER. 

has exercised due diligence in learning the lesson, 
and to know exactly how much of merit or demerit 
to mete out to him in the roll-book. Now this is to 
lower the whole affair — to mistake and ignore the 
true nature of the teacher's office. Of course, it is 
of prime importance thatthe scholars should prepare 
and study the lesson before coming to the class, and 
a proper record of faithfulness or unfaithfulness in 
this respect is among the legitimate means of stim- 
ulating scholars to study. I believe in recitation 
marks. Their influence, when rightly used, is per- 
vasive and beneficent. But after all, they are to be 
reckoned as the mint, anise and cummin, and not 
among the weightier matters. 

The true object in questioning in class is not so 
much to ascertain the present amount of their know- 
ledge as to increase it. It is to awaken thought, to 
bring up suggestive inquiries into their minds, to 
deepen impressions of truth already received, to 
bring into clear and sharp outline what is now seen 
but dimly and obscurely. It is a sifting process, by 
which the pupils are enabled to let go the chaff and 
to hold fast the pure wheat. Questioning, properly 
conducted, produces a sort of intellectual ferment in 
the minds of the class which is very favorable to the 
acquisition of new truths. Mind is a curious ma- 
chine, working according to Jaws of its own; and 
one of those laws is, that a certain amount of excite- 
ment is necessary to the rapid and sure apprehension 
of knowledge. A truth, a sentence, a single word 



THE TEACHER. 161 

dropped into the mind just at the right moment, 
when its powers of eager inquiry and lively appre- 
hension are all in the highest state of activity, will 
produce a greater fructifying effect than any con- 
ceivable amount of dull, plodding routine over 
lessons. 

Nor should the teacher make the mistake, which 
many make, of supposing that the mind of a child is 
merely a fountain, and the questioning process is a 
sort of pump, and that by a due working of the 
machine knowledge can be drawn out. Knowledge 
is never drawn out unless it has first been taken in. 
Mind is a power, and the business of the teacher is 
to stir up that power. When knowledge has once 
entered the mind, it is indeed important that it should 
be again given out. The reproduction of our know- 
ledge in intelligible form is as important to us as is 
the first taking of it in. We get an idea, and then 
we give it out. In all true teaching the two pro- 
cesses go together. The one is the complement of 
the other. Direct, positive inculcation should al- 
ways accompany questioning. Pour in as well as 
draw out. Draw out what you pour in. 

The main end, then, of questioning a class is not 
to register progress, but to promote it — to stir up 
mental activity and add to the pupil's stock of know- 
ledge. No matter how studious a scholar may be, or 
how faithful may have been his preparation, he will 
come away from the recitation, if it has been rightly 
conducted, knowing more than he did. One hour 
14* L 



1 62 THE TEACHER. 

of recitation ought to be worth three hours of soli- 
tary study. 

3. How shall a teacher question a class so as to 
bring about this result? 

In the first place, he must not limit himself to the 
questions in the question-book. To sit down before 
a class and read questions out of a book is about the 
dullest and most stupid, as well as most stupefying, 
process ever attempted. Better that every question- 
book in print were with Pharaoh's chariots at the 
bottom of the Red Sea than that such a process of 
hearing lessons should fix itself upon our schools. 
The question-book has its place, but that place is 
not in the school-room or the class. The sole object 
of the question-book is to help in preparing the 
lesson. Neither teacher nor scholar should be al- 
lowed to bring one to school ; or if brought to school, 
they should be gathered up and carefully piled away 
before the lesson begins. What if the teacher in 
catechising the class does forget to ask some of the 
questions, or asks them in a different order from that 
in the book, or asks them in different words? Ten 
questions springing up as the course of inquiry sug- 
gests, while teacher and scholars are engaged in 
earnest conversation, face to face, eye to eye, are 
worth fifty questions put and answered in the usual 
humdrum style. 

In the second place, the teacher who would ques- 
tion his class with skill and effect must be thoroughly 
at home in the lesson. He must not only know the 



THE TEACHER. 163 

facts and truths which it involves, but he must be 
familiar with them. He must know them as he 
knows the road to school. It is on this point more 
than any other that teachers fail. They think if 
they go over a lesson and study out all its hard 
points, so as to understand them, they are prepared. 
It is a mistake. Study the hard points, of course. 
But what you chiefly want is familiarity with the 
easy points. In order to teach you must have your 
knowledge not safely laid away in some remote re- 
cess of the understanding — in some underground 
magazine of your intellectual fortress — but brought 
forward into the very outworks, ready for instant 
handling and use — on the tip of your tongue and the 
tip of your fingers, talking and chalking, asking and 
telling, just as the emergency of each successive mo- 
ment calls for. 

In the third place, get back from your scholars all 
you give them. It is implied in the very idea of 
teaching that you communicate to your scholars some 
new ideas — some facts or thoughts which they did 
not know before. Now this process is incomplete 
until you induce the class to reproduce and give back 
to you in some intelligible form what you have thus 
given them. The knowledge is really not theirs 
until they have reproduced it and given it expres- 
sion. They may have some vague idea or transient 
impression in regard to it. But they do not grasp it 
with firm hold or with- a clear and lasting apprehen- 
sion until they have expressed it in language. This 



164 THE TEACHER. 

is one of the laws of mental action. We fix a thing 
in our minds by communicating it to another ; we 
make it plain to ourselves by the very effort to give it 
explanation. Or, to state the matter still more para- 
doxically, we learn a thing by telling it to somebody, 
we keep it by giving it away. The only way to be 
sure that your scholars are learning from you is to 
get them to tell you back all you have told them. 
The teacher who does all the talking, or even the 
greater part of it, is making a mistake. You 
may talk very well, your scholars may hang with 
rapt attention upon your lips, and yet you may 
be making a huge mistake. You are attempting to 
make a web that is all warp. Fill in the woof, if 
you would make a texture that will hang together. 
Let the long yarns of your discourse be constantly 
crossed and recrossed by the swift-flying shuttle of 
question and answer, if you would be a weaver wor- 
thy of the name. 

In the fourth place, do not ask your questions 
regularly round the class, but skip about, taking first 
one scholar and then another, without following any 
regular order, only being sure to light down on any 
one that is inattentive, and being sure also to call 
on every one in the course of the lesson, the dull 
as well as the bright, the lazy as well as the dili- 
gent. Do not pride yourself upon puzzling your 
scholars and asking questions which none of them 
can answer. You may take this method some- 
times, perhaps, to check a child that is forward or 



THE TEACHER. 165 

pert. But such cases are rare compared with those 
who are timid and who need encouragement. Be 
prepared, therefore, with easy questions as well as 
with hard ones, and have something to ask which 
any one in the class, even the dullest and the most 
timid, can answer. The questioning power is not 
perfect which is not able to unloose every tongue in 
the class. 

8. How to Conduct a Recitation. 

1. Closing the Books. Let the teacher begin by 
closing his own book, and by collecting and piling 
up all the books of every kind in the class. I have 
no objection to hearing a preacher or a lecturer read 
a discourse. But when it comes to teaching, no 
reading either by teacher or scholar should be toler- 
ated. The teacher is there not to read something 
out of a book, but to tell the scholars something that 
he knows. The scholars are there not to read an- 
swers out of a book, but to recite answers which 
they have prepared. They are to tell the teacher 
their thoughts, either in language committed to 
memory from the book, or in their own language, in 
order that their answers may be canvassed by the 
teacher and compared with his views. The teacher 
may say, perhaps, that, in attempting to conduct a 
recitation without referring to the book, he is likely 
to omit many of the questions, or not to call them in 
the order in which they occur. I think this is alto- 
gether probable. But the questions, be it remem- 



1 66 THE TEACHER. 

bered, are to study by, not to recite by. They help 
the teacher to fill his mind with the subject ; there 
their function ends. Coming to his class with his 
mind thus full, it is of little matter whether he fol- 
lows the order of the book or not, or whether he 
goes through all the minutiae in the book or not. 
He will find himself in possession of ample materials 
to fill up all the time at his disposal. This hand-to- 
hand encounter between scholars and teacher, in 
discussing the meaning of a lesson, is unlike any 
other mental process that we ever go through, and 
is, of all our mental processes, the one most vital- 
izing ; neither solitary study, nor listening to dis- 
courses and lectures, is comparable to it in the 
quickening effect which it has upon the mental 
faculties. It is of the very essence of teaching. 
Nothing else is teaching. 

2. Reciting the Verses. Having closed his own 
book and collected and closed the books of the 
class, let the teacher next have the Bible verses re- 
cited which form the subject of the lesson. And 
here will come a real difficulty. At first, especially, 
the scholars will not know the verses. One of the 
most difficult things, nowadays, in the whole work of 
the school-room, whether in the Sunday-school or in 
other schools, is to get the young to commit anything 
to memory. The current seems to have all set the 
other way, and whoever attempts the thing named 
will find himself working his way up stream. Never- 
theless, it is worth the effort, and if he persists, he 



THE TEACHER. 1 67 

will in the end succeed. And in this matter of re- 
citing the verses the teacher himself should set the 
example. The first thing he ought to do, in prepar- 
ing the lesson, is to commit to memory the passage 
which he is to expound. The lessons, as marked 
off in our question-books, seldom exceed a dozen 
verses, and surely there is no one so busy or so dull 
of recollection as not to be able to learn that much 
in the course of the week. Let the teacher, in this 
part of the exercise, set the example, not only in 
committing the verses to memory, but in reciting 
them. If they are recited verse about, each member 
of the class saying one, let the teacher take his turn 
with the rest. If he happens to have a class no one 
of which has learned the verses, let him recite the 
whole ! Such an example will shame the scholars 
into learning some verses at least. The first and 
most earnest and most persistent effort of the Sunday- 
school teacher should be directed to this end ; that 
is, to securing from his scholars an accurate and 
prompt recital from memory of the verses which 
form the body of the lesson. 

3. Hunting up the References. Have some 
method about hunting up passages or places which 
are referred to in the lesson, or which come up for 
remark or illustration in the course of the exercises. 
A good plan is to have by you a Bible, a Scripture 
atlas, and a Bible dictionary, and whenever a ques- 
tion arises in the course of the conversation between 
the teacher and the scholars about some place or 



1 68 THE TEACHER. 

person or passage of Scripture, and it is desirable to 
have the matter settled by a reference to the book, 
do not delay the class or yourself by stopping to hunt 
up the thing referred to, but selecting some one of 
the class for this purpose, and giving him the book 
to make the search, go on to some topic until he is 
ready to report. As soon as he has found the in- 
formation required, a pause can be made in the re- 
citation, and he or you can read or show to the class 
the result of his inquiries. The task of making these 
searches should not always be assigned to the same 
pupil, but should be distributed, first to one and 
then to another, so that all in turn may share in the 
exercise. By such a process two important ends 
are gained. The time of the class is economized, 
and the members are gradually trained to familiar- 
ity and skill in the use of books of reference. It 
would not be amiss to have by you, besides the 
three books which have been named, a good Eng- 
lish dictionary, such as the latest edition of Webster's 
octavo. Questions often arise in a Sunday-school 
class about the pronunciation or the meaning of a 
word, and it is well to settle it authoritatively and on 
the spot. 

4. Skiff ing About. In every part of the exer- 
cise, whether in reciting the verses or in answering 
questions, never go round the class in regular order, 
but skip about from one to another, so that no one 
may know when he is to be called upon. Propound 
a question first, clearly and distinctly, so that all 



THE TEACHER. 1 69 

can hear, and try to make all hear it, and then select 
and designate the one who is to give the answer. 
If you see a scholar inattentive and listless, or giving 
his attention to something else, let that be an invari- 
able reason for putting the question to him. If you 
do not succeed in getting an answer from him, you 
will succeed in recalling his attention. Have in 
your mind a number of easy questions which almost 
everybody can answer. In nearly every class are 
some who are timid, or who are slow of comprehen- 
sion, or slow of speech, and they are apt to fall into 
the idea that nothing is to be done by them, nothing 
is expected of them. They need encouragement, 
and there is no way of encouraging them equal to 
that of giving them something to do which they can 
do. Do not let all the talking and reciting be done 
by a few bright scholars, but see that something is 
said or done by every one, the dullest and most 
timid as well as the most sprightly and forward. 

5. Keeping all the Class Engaged. Aim to 
have the attention of all your scholars all the time. 
Do not make the mistake of some teachers who seem 
to think that they are to break up their time into 
little doses, giving first two or three minutes to one, 
and then two or three minutes to another, and so on 
round the class. Aim to keep your own mind and 
that of your class filled with the idea that everything 
which you say, and also everything which one of 
the scholars says, is said not to an individual, but to 
the class, that the whole thing, in every one of its 

15 



17° THE TEACHER, 

parts, is a class exercise, addressed to and belonging 
to the class as a whole, and not to any one indi- 
vidual. To this end always place yourself, whether 
sitting or standing, in such a way that your eyes can 
command every part of the class. Some teachers 
place themselves so close to the class that a part 
of the line of pupils overlaps them to the right and 
left, and so is out of the line of vision and of direct 
communication. Such a thing may seem to some to 
be a small matter, but it is of great importance in 
securing entire and undivided attention from the 
class. 

6. Making the Scholars do the Talking. Aim 
to get your scholars to talk, rather than to talk your- 
self. Of course the teacher must have something to 
say. But many teachers err in doing all the talking. 
It is by telling a thing, by explaining it to others, by 
giving expression to it in words, that it becomes 
clearly defined and fixed in our own mind. This is 
one of the laws of mental action, and this is one rea- 
son that people learn faster by reciting and by cate- 
chetical instruction than by listening to lectures. 
However fluent we may be in conducting a recitation, 
our scholars are learning little from us unless we 
manage to unloose their tongues as well as ours. In 
all good teaching there is the joint action of the 
teacher's mind and of the scholar's mind. It can 
never be a one-sided process. Give the scholar the 
needed information if he is destitute of it, but make 
him give it back to you in words. Be sure he has 



THE TEACHER. 171 

not made it his own until he has thus reproduced it. 
Draw out and pour in. Pour in and draw out. 
This, as I have said before, is the sum of the whole 
matter. 

9. Teaching Out of Book. 

Imagine a company of soldiers, raw recruits, 
standing up to drill. The captain is undertaking to 
teach them the complicated bodily movements con- 
nected with facing, wheeling, marching and hand- 
ling their weapons. Imagine him standing, book in 
hand, and perhaps spectacles on his nose, and finger 
on the line to keep the place, carefully reading the 
word of command, then looking off the book to see 
the movement of the soldiers, then looking back at 
the book to read the description of the movement 
and see whether it corresponds to the way in which 
the soldiers have executed it, then proceeding to the 
next movement, and soon through the whole manual 
of arms and book of military tactics. Is there any 
one that would not pronounce the whole proceeding 
absurd ? 

Yet this is precisely what may be seen in the 
school-room any day in the week, Sunday not ex- 
cepted. Go into a Sunday-school, or into any other 
school. In nineteen cases out of twenty the teacher 
is before his class, book in hand, undertaking to 
teach exactly as our imaginary captain was under- 
taking to drill. The proceeding is just as absurd in 
the one case as in the other. ■ All the difficulty of 



172 THE TEACHER. 

maintaining order, of securing attention, of making 
the children interested, of keeping every part of the 
class engaged at the same time, has its root in this 
method of teaching out of book. If the teacher is 
pinned down to his question-book, obliged first to 
read the question, then to look at his class, then to 
look at the answer in the book to see if it corre- 
sponds to that given by the scholar, he may perhaps 
be hearing a lesson, but he is not teaching. In real 
teaching there should be no book in the hands of 
either teacher or scholars. I do not mean that books 
should not be used in the preparation of the lesson. 
Some persons indeed go so far as to say that text- 
books should be dispensed with entirely, the teacher 
supplying the knowledge by familiar lectures, and 
then catechising the pupils upon it until they know 
it. This is a mistake in the other extreme. In my 
opinion the scholars should have a text-book, and 
should prepare their lessons by means of it. It is 
important for them not only to learn the knowledge 
or facts contained in the lesson, but to learn how to 
study. The object of the recitation, however, is to 
sift the knowledge acquired by the pupil in his pri- 
vate preparation, to bring it out for examination, to 
correct it wherever it is faulty, to round it and give 
it completeness by additions from the teacher's own 
fulness. 

Nothing is so exhilarating to all concerned as real, 
live teaching. Scholars and teacher enjoy it alike. 
But to this end, while in the class, books must be en- 



THE TEACHER. 173 

tirely laid aside. Where the class has a room by itself, 
so that the teacher can be free in his movements, 
he should stand or walk about in front of his class 
just as a captain or a drill sergeant does in front of 
his company. Sitting down to teach is, precisely on 
a par with sitting down while putting a company of 
soldiers through their movements. Teaching is a 
mental gymnastic, and while it lasts it should be 
conducted with such vigor and such tension of mind 
that at brief intervals, half an hour or three-quarters 
at the most, teacher and pupils alike will need a 
breathing-spell. 

Most of the teachers whose eyes these paragraphs 
will reach will think it quite out of the question for 
them to attempt to carry this theory through with 
their classes. Suppose their class has a lesson in 
the question-book. How can the teacher remember 
all those minute questions? But is it necessary that 
you should? Is it intended that all these questions 
should be.asked and answered in recitation, and ex- 
actly in the order put down in the book? Most de- 
cidedly, No. The true way to use a question-book 
is this. First, let all, scholars and teacher, commit 
thoroughly to memory the text or verses which form 
the basis of the lesson. If any of the scholars can- 
not as yet be induced to do this, let the teacher at 
least not fail to do it. Let him have the verses at 
his tongue's end, just as the captain has at his 
tongue's end the various words of command. The 
next step in preparing the lesson is to find answers 
15* 



174 THE TEACHER. 

to all the questions in the book. This helps to bring 
out the meaning. The teacher would do well also 
to go over the subject in his mind and see how far 
he can recall the various points without referring to 
the book. Having thus studied the lesson, let teacher 
and pupil both when the hour for teaching arrives 
lay aside their books and come face to face as friend 
to friend when talking about some point of interest, 
as man to man when meeting in the street, as buyer 
and seller when driving a bargain. 

There is a prevailing timidity on this point among 
Sunday-school teachers. It requires some nerve at 
first to undertake to teach without book. But a little 
extra exertion in preparing the lesson will secure 
you against failure, and when you have once achieved 
success and delivered yourself from the trammels of 
the book-method, you will feel such freedom and 
joy in the work that you will wonder how you 
could ever have worked otherwise. 

That I may not be supposed to be advocating 
something entirely unattainable, let me quote an ex- 
ample or two to show what is done wherever the art 
of teaching has been made a study. 

Professor Newell, the Principal of the Normal 
School of Maryland, before taking charge of that 
institution, went on a tour of observation to some of 
the leading State Normal schools of the country. In 
his report on the subject occurs the following re- 
mark : " Though I did not find exactly the same 
methods of instruction prevailing in all the schools 



THE TEACHER. 175 

visited, nor even in all the departments of the same 
school, yet a striking family likeness could be noticed 
among them all. I never saw a teacher in one of 
those schools use a text-book (other than a spelling 
or a reading-book), except for occasional reference. 
I was present at recitations in history in several 
schools, and in none did the teacher use a book. 
Every lesson seemed to be thoroughly mastered and 
systematically arranged in the teacher's mind before 
coming to class ; and I have no doubt that many of 
the teachers spent as much time in preparation as 
their scholars did." 

Horace Mann, in his report of six weeks among 
the Prussian schools, says : " During all this time / 
never saw a teacher hearing a lesson of any kind 
(except a reading or a spelling lesson) with a book 
in his hand.^ 

" I never saw a teacher with a text-book in his 
hand !" Will our Sunday-school teachers ponder 
these words ? It is not meant that text-books should 
be discarded. The schools visited by Professor 
Newell were not taught on the lecture system. The 
classes and the teachers that he describes in almost 
every case had used books in the preparation of the 
lesson. But in reciting the lesson teachers and 
pupils alike laid aside all books. In fact, no book 
is allowed to make its appearance in the recitation- 
room. Teacher and pupil meet in fair and equal 
encounter, each dependent solely on the knowledge 
that has become bona fde his own. The teacher 



176 THE TEACHER. 

stands up before his class and questions them, or 
discourses to them from the fulness of his own 
mind, looking them directly in the face. The schol- 
ar's response, in like manner, is from himself, not 
from his book. This is live work, and it has a 
quickening influence on all concerned. It almost 
certainly secures that direct contact of mind with 
mind which constitutes teaching. A man may learn 
by solitary study. But if he is taught by another, it 
must be by having that other's mind brought into 
living contact with his own, and there is no bar to 
this contact so thoroughly effectual as a text-book in 
the hand of the teacher. A man might as well at- 
tempt to see his class through leather spectacles as 
to teach them with his eye on a question-book. 

Will our teachers who have been all their lives in 
bondage to their text-book method of hearing a 
lesson be persuaded for once to try teaching without 
book? They will be amazed at the sudden feeling 
of emancipation that they will experience. There 
is a wonderful sense of freedom and enjoyment in 
thus teaching. The scholars enjoy it too. Recita- 
tion instantly loses its character of humdrum, and 
becomes animated and absorbing, like the exercise 
of some pleasant game. The ideas too that are 
evolved in such a process acquire a peculiar sharp- 
ness and definiteness, and they are stamped in on 
the memory in characters never to be effaced. 

It may perhaps require some courage for you to 
go before your class the first time without your 



THE TEACHER. 1 77 

question-book. You will undoubtedly see a lion in 
the path. But, like Bunyan's pilgrim, you will find 
the lion chained. Your first lesson on this plan will 
be your hardest. Every succeeding lesson will be 
easier, and in the end you will wonder that you 
could ever have been content to teach in any other 
way. The Sunday-school teacher of course will 
always need to have his Bible in hand, for the pur- 
pose of referring to chapter and verse when parallel 
passages are needed for confirmation. But the text 
and the topics of the lesson itself should always be 
thoroughly committed to memory and the question- 
book should be left at home. 

Such a method undoubtedly requires study and 
preparation. But it pays. 

10. Holding the Attention of a Class. 

The idea which some teachers have of their office 
is that their whole duty consists in hearing lessons. 
Until this idea is thoroughly scattered to the winds 
there can be no progress, not even a tendency toward 
improvement. Teaching and hearing lessons are 
different processes. A child recites lessons when it 
repeats something previously learned. A child is 
taught when it learns from the teacher something 
not known before. The two things often, indeed, 
go together, but they are in themselves essentially 
distinct. A class of children may come to school, 
and each in turn recite what it has learned from its 
parents at home, and the teacher, so called, may be 

M 



178 THE TEACHER. 

of some use in listening to the children, and in judg- 
ing and recording the merits of each. In performing 
such a function as this, it is hardly necessary to have 
the attention of any member of the class except the 
one who for the time is repeating his verses, and the 
teacher would find it next to impossible to secure any 
greater amount of attention, even should he attempt 
it. In a class so conducted all that the teacher can 
hope for is that, by the help of library books, papers, 
coaxing and scolding, the several members may be 
kept from actual riot during that portion of the hour 
when each one is not going through his own individ- 
ual performance. 

But let the teacher once wake up to the idea of 
what teaching really is, and he will begin to see, 
first how vital it is that he should all the time have 
the attention of all his class, and, secondly, that this 
essential result is really attainable. Let it only be 
understood that the class go to the teacher to learn 
something from him, and that the teacher goes to 
the class to teach them, that is, to make them know 
something which they did not know before. Noth- 
ing can be plainer than that he must have the un- 
divided attention of the whole class all the time. 
To proceed without this would be working to the 
greatest possible disadvantage. , Suppose a teacher 
has a class of ten, and that the time of actual teach- 
ing extends to fifty minutes, which is an allowance 
reached in few Sunday-schools. If the teacher, in- 
stead of claiming the attention of the whole class at 



THE TEACHER. 1 79 

once, proceeds on the individual method, and takes 
but one pupil at a time, he will have but five min- 
utes to give to each, and besides, instead of giving 
but one lesson, will have to give ten separate lessons. 
The practical absurdity of such a method is too 
apparent to require argument. The teacher who 
would accomplish anything worth the name of teach- 
ing must come to his class with one definite, well- 
prepared lesson or train of thought in his mind, and 
must then give his whole" time and energy to the 
task of putting that train of thought into the minds 
of his youthful auditory. How this is to be done is 
another matter. But the one indispensable pre- 
requisite is that he have this singleness of purpose, 
and that the class for the time shall be a unit, that 
is, that he shall have their undivided attention. 

Such attention will not be given to one whose own 
attention is confined in any considerable degree to the 
book. I cannot too often repeat, The teacher must 
learn to teach without book. To be obliged first to 
look into the book for the purpose of reading out a 
question, then to look round the class and hear the 
answer, then to look into the book again and see if 
the answer is right, is to subject one's self to con- 
tinual embarrassment, and practically to lose control 
of the class. We may compare it to a man driving 
a six-horse team who should drop his lines every 
few rods for the purpose of buttoning up his coat, or 
putting a cracker on his whip, or to examine a map 
or a guide-book. Every time the teacher stops to 



180 THE TEACHER. 

look into the book, except in the most casual way, 
he drops the reins, and the young coursers take the 
bit into their own mouths. If the teacher would 
hold the attention of the class, he must give the class 
his own attention. Whatever attention is given by 
him to the book is so much withdrawn from the 
class, and consequently so much of his power over 
the class is lost. There is no mystery about it at all. 
Any teacher who has the lesson thoroughly at his 
command, so that if he needs to refer to the book at 
all it will only be in the most casual and rapid way, 
can experience no great difficulty in securing atten- 
tion. 

The true secret of the whole matter lies in the 
preparation of the lesson. Here is the difficulty. 
What can we say to persuade teachers to be more 
diligent in this matter? Going over the questions in 
a question-book and hunting out an answer to each 
question is not enough. The question-book is in- 
tended to help in studying the lesson, but should 
never be used in teaching it. Before beginning to 
hear a lesson, let teachers and scholars all lay aside 
their question-books. Collect them and pile them 
up until the lesson is over. What if you do forget 
some of the questions ? No great harm is done, and 
an immense gain is secured. Teacher and scholars 
are thrown directly upon their own resources. 
Knowing that the lesson is to be gone through in 
this way, you will not fail to make your preparation 
in an entirely different kind of way from what you 



THE TEACHER. 181 

have been accustomed to. You will find in each 
lesson certain leading facts and thoughts, and you 
will endeavor to fix these definitely in your memory, 
without reference so much to the particular form of 
words in which they are expressed. You will un- 
consciously make questions of your own or put the 
same questions in different shapes, and will continue 
to go over each point until you find the whole class 
familiar with it. 

By being thus untrammelled with the question- 
books, you and your scholars will be left to the free 
use of your eyes, and the eye is as great a teacher as 
the tongue. The teacher must look right into the 
eyes of his scholars all the while if he would hold 
their attention. Scholars like this living, constant 
interchange of looks with their teacher. The influ- 
ence of it is magnetic. It quickens thought as well 
as sympathy. It transforms the whole exercise and 
makes the recitation a season of exhilaration and 
enjoyment. But no one can be thus free to use his 
eyes unless the lesson is entirely at his command, so 
that the book may be closed. 

Study the lesson. Teach without book. Use your 
eyes. Do these three things, and you will find no 
difficulty in holding the attention of your class. You 
will then really and truly teach. 

Before dropping the subject I wish to express an- 
other thought, though it is to some extent implied in 
what I have said already. 

If you want to hold the attention of a class, par- 
16 



io2 THE TEACHER, 

ticularly if the scholars be quite young, you must 
make them all actors in what is going on. Children, 
grown people too, tire of being talked at, or merely 
acted upon. None of us like to be in the passive 
voice. The indicative, active, first person, singular, 
is the favorite part of the whole verb. There must 
be question and answer in quick succession if the 
class is to be kept thoroughly wide awake. If even 
in sermon time it were possible to have occasionally 
some "answering back," instead of the congregation 
remaining entirely passive, there would not be quite 
as many sleepers as we now sometimes see in look- 
ing over the pews. 

As I have said before, children are often kept 
wide awake by skipping about in giving out the 
questions, instead of passing regularly round the 
class. But in pursuing this method one caution is 
to be observed. Unless the teacher is himself wide 
awake, all the reciting will be done by two or three 
bright scholars, while the lazy ones will quietly slip 
out altogether. 

One of the finest methods of waking up a class 
that I have ever seen was in the Girls' High School 
of Philadelphia. The exercise was what used to be 
known in that institution as "fast parsing." In this 
case the questions were not skipped about, but passed 
in regular order round the class, but passed so rapidly 
that the pupils had to keep their wits about them 
with as much intensity of attention as that of the 
player at sword fencing. To make this movement 



THE TEACHER. 183 

the more rapid, the parsing of each word was cut 
up into as many separate items as possible, each 
pupil being required to give only one single item, 
and give it in the exact order previously prescribed. 
For example. In parsing a verb, pupil number one 
says, "It is a verb," number two gives the principal 
parts, number three says, "It is regular," number 
four, "It is transitive," number five, "It is in the 
active voice," number six, "It is in the past tense," 
number seven, "It is in the singular number," num- 
ber eight, "It is in the third person," and so on. If 
any pupil hesitates a moment, or says wrong, or says 
the right thing out of its right order, the teacher in- 
stantly passes it on to "the next," "the next," until 
the right answer is given. 

A class must, of course, have already attained 
good proficiency in parsing, or in any other exercise, 
before this method could be applied to it. But this 
point once gained, the effect in keeping the attention 
upon the strain is marvellous. It is not recommended 
as a means of securing close and careful thought, or 
learning nice distinctions, but simply as a sort of 
mental gymnastics. If the pupil lets his attention 
flag for half a minute he is tripped up. And then it 
differs from the usual methods of tossing a question 
about according to the show of hands or the snap- 
ping of fingers. These methods produce a lively 
time for the spectator. . But there is always a consid- 
erable part of the class that do nothing. These very 
pupils that thus sit quiescent and passive are the 



184 THE TEACHER. 

very ones that need to be waked up and put into the 
active voice, first person singular. But in the "fast" 
method, every scholar is stirred up. It has all the 
awakening and enlivening effect of a merry game. 

The " fast" method is one to be used with caution 
and only as an occasional exercise. Quickness of 
perception, promptness of utterance and a thoroughly 
awakened attention are cultivated by it. But these 
are not the only mental qualities to be cultivated. 
We need the power to trace out and bring to light 
hidden analogies — a power that necessarily moves 
slowly, cautiously and inquiringly. We need that 
power of complete and continuous expression which 
comes from the topical method of recitation. 

11. Keeping the Children Busy. 

Among Mr. Fitch's celebrated maxims for Sunday- 
school teachers is this : " Never permit any child to 
remain in the class, even for a minute, without some- 
thing to do and a motive for doing it." No one can 
doubt the excellence of the rule. The difficulty is 
in knowing how to keep it. It is like saying to a 
minister, Preach like Henry Ward Beecher and you 
will be sure of having a good congregation ; or say- 
ing to a clerk, Write like the Spencerians and you 
may be sure of a good salary ; - or saying to a child 
just beginning to learn to walk, Hold yourself straight, 
put your feet out one after the other as I do and you 
will not fall. This keeping all the children in a 
school fully occupied all the time is just the very 



THE TEACHER. 185 

hardest thing for the teacher to do. It is the crown- 
ing achievement of the teacher's art. To point to it 
distinctly as an aim toward which the teacher should 
direct his efforts and his ambition, and to suggest 
means and devices by which he may be helped in 
reaching it, is all very well. But simply enjoining 
it as an elementary rule has always seemed to me 
somewhat absurd. 

Every one who has taught in a common school, or 
in a Sunday-school, knows that one of the most diffi- 
cult things to do is to keep one part of the class or 
of the school properly occupied while he is busy 
with the other part. Children are by nature rest- 
less, and none more so than those who are particu- 
larly bright and intelligent. Indeed it is often the 
brightest scholars in the school that give the most 
trouble. When the teacher, as it sometimes hap- 
pens in Sunday-schools, has only one class, and the 
children composing it have all exactly the same les- 
son, the problem is comparatively easy. But this is 
rarely the case. Even in Sunday-schools, and under 
the best classification, the teacher is sure to have one 
or more scholars who require special and separate 
instruction, and while the teacher is attending to 
these the others need to be provided with work. 
In many classes, in mission-schools, almost every 
scholar is a unit by himself, requiring separate treat- 
ment. In the common weekday district-school the 
difficulties are greater still., There the teacher 
usually has from forty to fifty scholars divided into 
16* 



1 86 THE TEACHER. 

at least a dozen classes, of which only one can be 
taught at a time. The others, it is true, have their 
lessons to prepare in the intervals between recita- 
tion. But to keep their little feet and hands and 
tongues all busy with their studies, not by terror and 
punishment, but by adequate motives of a better 
kind, taxes the ingenuity and the invention of the 
most skilful teacher. The common-school teacher, 
however, has the advantage of being able to use 
methods and subjects that would not be appropriate 
to a Sunday-school. Children, for instance, are 
fond of doing sums in addition, subtraction, multi- 
plication and division, especially under the principle 
of emulation, striving to see who can do the greatest 
number of sums, and as this kind of exercise is in 
itself exceedingly valuable in making them practi- 
cally expert in figures, teachers often employ this 
method of filling up waste moments, requiring the 
pupils first to study the appointed lessons, and then 
allowing them to acquire extra merit marks by 
doing as many of these sums as they can find time 
for. To facilitate this kind of exercise, ingenious 
methods have been invented by which a teacher 
may place upon the board any number of arithmet- 
ical examples of this kind, so constructed that the 
teacher knows by inspection whether the answer is 
right or wrong without having to work out the sum 
himself, although the pupil has to go through all the 
work in order to get the right result. 

The Sunday-school teacher who aims to observe 



THE TEACHER. 187 

Mr. Fitch's rule must become inventive. Invention, 
in fact, is one of the prime requisites in all teaching. 
No rule can be given which will apply to all cases. 
Every class has its peculiarities. The teacher must 
think of the character and disposition of each of his 
scholars, and during the week must say to himself, 
What is there that I can give to this child, what to 
that, what to the other, to do while the rest of us are 
otherwise engaged ? The thing thus assigned should 
be something that the child will not look upon as a 
disagreeable and irksome command, but as some- 
thing which will be attractive and interesting, and 
which he will enter upon with zest as a pleasure. 
It should be also something which the teacher can, 
without much interruption or loss of time, examine, 
that he may test the correctness of it, and make some 
kind of record of what each child accomplishes. 
Care should be taken that these little tasks should be 
of a definite kind, which can be exactly measured as 
right or wrong, that they should not be puzzling or 
complex, and that, instead of one long task to be done 
with greater or less degree of perfection, there should 
be a number of small and comparatively easy things, 
each complete in itself, so that every pupil may be 
able to do at least one, while none will be able to 
do all. 

Suppose for instance a teacher, who had a class 
of suitable age and attainments for such a purpose, 
were to ask his pupils to open to the first chapter of 
Matthew, twenty-second verse, where it is said that 



loo THE TEACHER. 

the Saviour's birth was in fulfilment of prophecy, 
and after explaining the matter to them should say, 
While I am engaged in hearing the different parts 
of the class recite, I would like each of you to begin 
at this twenty-second verse and read on and see how 
many other places in the narrative you can find 
where it is said that prophecy was fulfilled. But 
keep a sharp lookout not to overlook any. I will give 
one credit mark for every example which you find, 
taking them in the order in which they occur, but 
will deduct one for every example which you may 
overlook. I have been examining the narrative my- 
self during the week, and have the examples all at 
my finger ends ; so you must look out that I do not 
find you tripping. 

On another occasion, or with a different class, 
supposing the pupils to be furnished with a suitable 
map, he might point them to the thirteenth chapter 
of Acts, and might say, You see here that Paul and 
Barnabas set out from Antioch on a missionary tour. 
Suppose you follow the narrative with the map be- 
fore you and see how far you can trace Paul's jour- 
ney ings during the time which you will have to spare 
this morning, so that you can point with your finger 
from place to place each step in his journey, not 
omitting any. 

There is in the Bible no end to the things which 
children may be requested to find out, and there is 
nothing that children like better than to hunt. They 
will hunt for Scripture facts and truths, if once their 



THE TEACHER. 1 89 

curiosity is aroused and some little emulous excite- 
ment is produced, with as much pleasure as they 
hunt for shells or flowers or squirrels. But it re- 
quires on the teacher's part a great deal of time and 
thought bestowed upon invention. He must be all 
the while hunting up something new. The exam- 
ples which I have given are not in themselves par- 
ticularly good, but they may serve, perhaps, to explain 
what I mean and to put the teacher on the right 
track. 

12. Gaining the Affections of Scholars. 

This is a hackneyed subject, and for that very 
reason one to be discussed. It is mentioned so often 
because of its supreme importance, and this supreme, 
urgent importance of the subject makes it proper for 
me to recur to it again and again. 

The teacher who has not the love of his scholars 
can do little toward promoting their advancement, 
either mentally or morally. If, instead of loving 
and respecting him, they have for him a positive 
dislike, the task of teaching is almost hopeless. If 
there could be a true record of school-room labor, 
what a sad revelation would much of it be ! In how 
many cases the chief end of the teacher is to detect 
mischief, the chief end of the scholar to escape de- 
tection ! In how many cases the lesson is not a 
boon to be craved, but a task to be deplored and if 
possible evaded ! In how many cases the teacher is 
regarded not as a dear friend and helper, but as an 



19° THE TEACHER. 

enemy, a taskmaster, a tyrant, an obstacle in the 
way of enjoyment ! 

Thank God, these cases are on the decrease. As 
the business of teaching is becoming better under- 
stood, as the number is increasing of those who enter 
upon its duties because they like the work and find 
it congenial, there are proportionally fewer who 
make it an intolerable burden for themselves and 
their scholars. There are teachers, and there are 
scholars, who are never more happy than when in 
the school-room — who look forward with longing to 
the hour when school is to begin, and back with 
regret upon the hour when it closed. There are 
schools which are more attractive than the play- 
ground or the social party. In all such schools 
Love reigns. There are rules, doubtless, and some- 
times penalties, for children will forget, and they 
need restraint even under the best conditions. But 
the supreme power, that sits enthroned at the desk 
and that sways every will in that little kingdom, is a 
spirit of love. 

Why is it important that scholars should love their 
teacher ? 

Not because it is pleasant to the teacher to be 
loved. No doubt it does add to the teacher's happi- 
ness, and this added pleasure is something which he 
may well covet. But no true teacher is so selfish as 
to wish and labor for the love of his pupils merely 
for the personal gratification it affords. Such a view 
of the subject degrades and belittles it. 



THE TEACHER. 191 

A child's love for his teachers makes tasks easy. 
He is more ready to encounter toil in the preparation 
of lessons. He works hard without counting it 
work. He has no longer any motive for engaging 
in those petty tricks and annoyances which consume 
so much of some scholars' time. A desire to win 
the approbation of a teacher w T ho is loved gives to 
study a zest equal to that which children find in 
their games. 

Love and hatred have upon the understanding a 
singular effect which seems not to be appreciated by 
many persons, and which in fact has not as yet been 
fully explained. Hatred or evil passion of any kind 
has an effect upon the mind somewhat like that of 
stirring up the mud and sediment in the bottom of a 
fountain. The perceptions are obscured under such 
disturbing influences. No man can reason clearly 
when under the influence of anger or malice. Every 
bad passion stirs up the sediments in the bottom of 
the soul and makes it impossible for a man to see 
clearly or judge truly. The sun may shine brightly 
in the heavens, but it will reveal no gems of truth at 
the bottom of that fountain which is ever throwing 
up mire and dirt. Scholars will never learn much 
from a teacher who for any cause stirs up their feel- 
ings of animosity and dislike. Not only will they 
make less exertions to learn, but their very power of 
mental perception seems to be obscured. There is 
no clarifier of the understanding equal to that of a 
calm, serene, undoubting love. Mental perceptions, 



I9 2 THE TEACHER. 

in other words, are helped or hindered by the state 
of the heart. We may not be able, perhaps, to ex- 
plain it philosophically. But of the fact no teacher 
can well doubt who has had much experience in his 
work. 

But the teacher has other functions besides that of 
making his scholars grow in knowledge. He is to 
mould their opinions, to shape their moral senti- 
ments, to influence their habits. Here the power of 
love is still more marked than in the purely intel- 
lectual processes. Without love as a controlling 
motive, the teacher in all this important class of 
duties can do absolutely nothing. With love he may 
do what he will with the yielding and plastic ma- 
terials before him. 

How shall this love be gained? 

Not by weak compliances. Not by foolish and 
unwise indulgences. Not by flattering words. Love, 
to be of any value as an educating power, must be 
based on respect, and children do not respect a 
teacher who grants to their solicitations what they 
know is not for their real benefit, or who seeks to 
ingratiate himself with them by ministering to their 
vanity and self-conceit. Love is the true price for 
love. Let no teacher expect the love of his scholars 
who does not truly love them. God help the teacher 
who has not this love in his heart ! Most profoundly 
do I pity him. 

But some teachers who truly love their scholars 
shrink from giving it manifestation. This is not so 



THE TEACHER. 193 

bad as pretending to a love which you do not have. 
Stili, it is a mistake. Let your affection beam forth 
in your face and you will soon see a warm answer- 
ing smile in the face of your scholar. Faithful, con- 
scientious teachers sometimes err just here. They 
stand too much upon their dignity. They seem 
afraid of letting themselves down to the level of 
their scholars. 

Prodigious is the power of pleasant looks and 
pleasant words in the school-room. 

13. Reaching the Comprehension of the Scholars. 

One of the last things that a teacher learns is, 
how little the scholars understand of what he says. 
A word which to him seems perfectly plain, the mean- 
ing of which he takes for granted they know, con- 
veys to them no more idea than if it was Greek or 
Choctaw. It is only after long experience, and by 
many and painful trials, that he finds out that in 
teaching a lesson every word has to be questioned 
and challenged. I speak, of course, of young chil- 
dren and of primary instruction. Yet even pupils 
more advanced need watching. Scholars fifteen or 
sixteen years old often fall into the habit of hearing 
and of using w^ords to which they attach no mean- 
ing. I knew a boy fourteen years old, who had 
grown up in daily attendance upon excellent public 
schools, who when questioned upon the meaning of 
the phrase, " Forgive us our manifold sins," said 
that "manifold" meant u pertaining to man." An- 
17 N 



194 THE TEACHER. 

other in the same class said that " atonement" meant 
" orthodox," and gave in illustration of it the phrase, 
"the Church of the Atonement." Another boy in 
the class explained the common word "deride" as 
meaning "to ride down." 

I was once teaching a Bible-class consisting of 
young ladies, whose average age was certainly not 
less than seventeen, and most of whom were attend- 
ing school during the week. They were not poor 
girls, but belonged to educated families. The lesson 
was on the gift of tongues on the day of Pentecost, 
in the second chapter of Acts. This verse came 
under discussion : "And there appeared unto them 
cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each 
of them." It was found on inquiry that not one 
young lady in the class, consisting of some twelve or 
fourteen, had the slightest idea of what was meant 
by "cloven." They had heard and read hundreds 
of times of "cloven tongues," but apparently had 
never given a thought to the question what the word 
meant, or whether it meant anything. Some guessed 
that it might mean "fiery," and that was about the 
nearest conjecture that was ventured. 

In the case of young children, such as form the 
majority of those attending Sunday-school, examples 
even more striking than these might be adduced. 
The difficulty is that teachers mostly aim too high. 
In preparing a lesson they look for hidden meanings, 
for solutions of abstruse points of doctrine, which are 
deeply interesting to themselves, but are entirely above 



THE TEACHER. 1 95 

the heads of their children. The points needed in 
the instruction of children are for the most part those 
which are plain and simple, and which lie upon the 
very surface of the subject. The teacher is under 
the continual temptation to take for granted that a 
thing is plain to the children because it is so very 
plain to him. The more advanced a teacher is in 
knowledge the more he is liable to make this mis- 
take. The expert accountant who can run up a long 
column of figures, and almost by a glance of the eye 
tell the sum, can hardly realize by how slow and 
laborious a process a young beginner arrives at the 
simple result that three and two make five. The 
man who has spent his life in the study of language 
receives on reading a sentence a distinct idea from 
each word as it passes under review, without his 
once giving it a thought. Very different with the 
child. One-half the words that meet his eye in an 
ordinary reading-book convey to him no more mean- 
ing than do the cabalistic signs of algebra and the 
higher mathematics to one just learning to count. 
Hear a class of children reading. You know by 
the very tones of their voices that the words which 
they read awaken no ideas in their minds. They 
spell a word out and pronounce it, but it evidently 
stands to them for a mere sound and nothing more. 

Now in teaching a child the very first step is to 
gauge accurately his mind. You must first find out 
what he knows and what he does not know, and 
then there is some hope of your being able to minis- 



196 THE TEACHER. 

ter to his intellectual wants. Children exert a pow- 
erful influence upon children, because each knows 
from his own consciousness what interests his fel- 
lows. Grown persons often fail to influence the 
young, because they forget what were their own 
views and feelings when young. We must get down 
to the level of a child if we would make effectual 
entrance into his mind. We must put ourselves in 
a position to understand exactly what his difficulties 
are. Unless a child feels that he is understood, he 
is soon discouraged ; and though a compulsory obe- 
dience may make him appear to attend to what you 
say, your statements make no real lodgment in his 
thoughts. He may be looking at you, but he is 
thinking of something else. The intellect of a child 
must be reached, in a great measure, through his 
sympathies and his feelings. 

We may learn in this matter a useful lesson from 
the methods pursued in the instruction of idiots. 
The following example will illustrate my meaning. 
It was told me by Mr. Richards, the gentleman who 
first introduced the subject of the training of the 
feeble-minded to the attention of the philanthropists 
of Philadelphia. Among the feeble-minded children 
that Mr. Richards had in his charge was one that 
interested every visitor. It was a boy about ten 
years old. This child, when first found by Mr. R., 
was in about as low a condition as a human being 
could well be and yet be regarded as human at all. 
It was a child six years old, incapable of almost 



THE TEACHER. 197 

every kind of voluntary motion and apparently 
knowing nothing. It did not know its own mother. 
It took no notice of any one. It was dressed in a 
loose sort of sack and lay on its back on the floor. 
It could not chew or move the muscles of the throat, 
except merely to swallow milk or other nutritious 
liquid. It could neither walk, nor stand, nor sit, nor 
turn over, nor lift its hands, nor move any of its 
limbs. The only motion of which it seemed capable 
was sometimes to turn its head and a portion of its 
body a little over to one side. This mass of flesh 
and blood in human form lived and breathed, di- 
gested food, and performed the ordinary vital func- 
tions, but had thus far given no signs of containing 
within it even the germ of intellect. Its eyes looked 
out upon vacancy, seeing nothing. Its ears were 
formed like other ears, but whether they heard any- 
thing no one knew. Its very sense of feeling was 
almost wanting, a pin thrust into its leg to the depth 
of half an inch causing no sign of pain. It seemed 
below the level of the ordinary brute. No token of 
will, of passion, of love, of hate, of recognition even 
of the hand that fed it, had yet been given. Was 
there really a human soul in that living body? Mr. 
R. believed there was, and determined to make the 
attempt to awaken and develop its dormant energies. 
When I first saw this child he had been about 
four years under training. He could then walk 
across the room, could speak slowly a few words, 
and he repeated to me distinctly the Lord's Prayer. 
17* 



198 THE TEACHER. 

Three years later he was running about the grounds, 
playing and enjoying himself with the other chil- 
dren, could read and spell quite well, and answered 
correctly many simple questions that I put to him 
on various subjects. The transformation seemed 
almost miraculous, and I asked for information as 
to the steps by which it had been brought about. It 
would take me too long to detail all these steps. 
But one remark made an indelible impression upon 
my mind. Said Mr. R., " On looking at this child, 
and considering the question how I should raise 
him to the ordinary conditions of humanity, I be- 
lieved the first step to be to establish some connection 
between his mind (if he had a mind) and mine. 
This connection must spring out of sympathy. The 
child must be made in some way to feel that there 
was another being like itself. So, after pondering the 
matter for some time, and in the absence of all prece- 
dent to guide me, I made the following experiment, 
pretty much at a venture. About the middle of the 
morning I lay down on the floor alongside of him, 
and just as he was lying, and remained there an 
hour or two reading aloud from a book. I did the 
same thing in the afternoon, and so continued to do 
twice a day for about a fortnight, leaving him at the 
intervals quite alone. When this process had con- 
tinued so long that I thought some impression must 
have been made, I went in one day and lay down as 
usual, but did not read. I wished to see if he 
would notice the omission. The moment was criti- 



THE TEACHER. 1 99 

cal. I watched with the most intense anxiety. 
After three or four minutes of silence I saw signs of 
muscular action, and gradually he moved his head 
and face over toward me ! He was actually waiting 
for me to begin the customary noise ! I could hardly 
contain my joy. I felt that from that moment I had 
him ! I had got down to his level. I had estab- 
lished a connection between his mind and mine. 
From that day I never began the reading until he 
signified his desire for it by turning his head over 
toward me. Thus my first step in raising him up 
to my level was to get down to his level." 

14. Variety in Teaching. 

A mistake sometimes made by teachers is that of 
proceeding exactly in the same way all the year 
round. I do not, by any means, count it as among 
the most common or the most serious of errors in 
teaching. Yet it is an error, and a serious one, and 
it is usually committed by teachers who in other 
respects are worthy of high commendation. They 
have in some way formed for themselves a model of 
the manner in which a lesson should be given, and 
they follow it with undeviating uniformity year after 
hear. 

Such a course is at war with the constitution of 
the human mind. If order is heaven's first law, 
variety is the second. • The very best method of pre- 
senting truth, if followed constantly without change, 
becomes tiresome and loses its attraction. It is so 



200 THE TEACHER. 

with our food. The most wholesome and delicious 
articles of diet pall upon the appetite when long 
continued. We require change and variety in what 
we eat, whether we consult health or pleasure. The 
soil requires rotation of crops, else it becomes im- 
poverished and barren. What a marvellous change 
God has ordained in the seasons, giving us endless 
alternations of summer and winter, heat and cold, 
darkness and light, moisture and drought ! How the 
birds and the flowers, the grains, the fruits and the 
vegetables come and go in endless succession and 
equally endless variety ! All is change, yet all is 
order. Nature, in all her operations, seems equally 
to abhor confusion and monotony. 

Let us learn a lesson from this in our teaching. 
Let us learn that the very best methods of teaching 
and training, of discipline and government, wear out. 
They lose after a while their effect. Modes of stimu- 
lating enthusiasm or of awakening attention, of 
securing punctuality or of enforcing order, which for 
a time seemed perfect, begin after a time to lose 
their power upon the youthful mind. Just as we 
think we have everything perfect, we are working 
after the latest and most approved pattern, our ma- 
chinery is complete and moving without a flaw, just 
then somehow the propelling power gives way. The 
grooves and pulleys are all there, but the mind 
ceases to run in them. What a power in the Sun- 
day-school the little blue and red tickets once were ! 
Yet they wore out. Merit marks and demerit marks 



THE TEACHER. 20 1 

and averages for attendance, recitation or conduct, 
produce for a time prodigious effects, and an inex- 
perienced teacher, seeing the effect in some particu- 
lar case, jumps to the conclusion that he has found 
the universal remedy, and he settles down upon a 
system for life. 

In so doing he forgets one essential condition of 
the material upon which he is acting. A worker in 
wood or metal or other material substance, having 
invented the best mode of fashioning it to suit his 
purpose, follows that mode with undeviating uni- 
formity, or until some better mode is discovered. 
The more closely he sticks to his method and his 
pattern, the more sure he is of success. But it is 
quite otherwise with the worker upon mind. Here 
the material upon which we work is seldom tw T ice 
in the same condition. We influence and mould the 
mind of a child only by securing its own co-opera- 
tive action. We cannot teach a child by merely 
pouring out knowledge before him. Teaching, in 
its very essence, and in every stage of it, is a co- 
operative process. And there is no fact more patent 
to the thoughtful observer than that with children 
methods wear out. They tire of the same style of 
teaching and talking, no matter how good it may be, 
and when they tire of the method, and it ceases to 
interest them and to induce their active co-operation, 
the teacher's work is lost. He is working, but doing 
nothing. Hence the imperative necessity of his 
studying variety. 



202 THE TEACHER. 

The teacher should study variety in his manner, 
in his topics and in his illustrations.. 

i. The Manner. As to manner, it is, indeed, not 
easy to attain the variety that is desirable. Every 
one almost imperceptibly and inevitably falls into 
a certain style or manner which becomes habitual, 
and which it is of all things the most difficult to 
change at will. One is habitually lively and buoy- 
ant ; another grave and serious. One speaks in a 
quick, sharp tone ; another speaks mildly and per- 
suasively. One has the pleasant smile so attractive 
to children ; another looks austere and forbidding. 
One in speaking gesticulates a great deal, his hands 
and features expressing his thoughts almost as fully 
as his words ; another hardly moves a limb or a 
muscle in talking, but depends for effect upon his 
w r ords only. One is calm, impassive, collected ; 
another is ever boiling over with emotion of some 
kind. Now there is not a manner mentioned here, 
hardly a manner conceivable within the bounds of 
ordinary propriety, that has not its uses and that 
might not be adopted on some occasions with singu- 
lar fitness and effect. On the other hand, there is 
no manner, conceived or conceivable, that is suitable 
for all occasions. There is no manner that, if 
adopted on all occasions, will not become tiresome. 
There is no one best manner. The teacher must 
cultivate the faculty of changing his manner from 
time to time to suit the occasion and to prevent 
monotony. It is not an easy achievement. In no 



THE TEA CHER. 203 

one thing is it so difficult to be various, and yet per- 
haps no one faculty is so important. In the case of 
the worker upon dead matter, it is of no consequence 
whether he is gay or grave, whether he smiles or 
frowns. The wood or the metal is just as pliable 
in the one case as the other. Not so the child. If 
you would mould him according to your wishes, you 
must vary your own moods with his. 

2. The Topics. The topics to be presented in 
teaching are literally infinite, and therefore the 
teacher has no excuse w T ho travels on in one monot- 
onous round of subjects. Variety even here, how- 
ever, will not come unsought. The teacher must 
have the wants of his class on his mind and be on 
the lookout for fresh matter. All nature is full of 
subjects for instruction. God's word in this respect 
is as remarkable as his works. No book in the 
world is so various in its matter as the Bible. Teach- 
ers and preachers sometimes make it monotonous by 
their mode of handling it. They undertake to set 
forth a system of divinity, and then hunt up proof- 
texts to establish their system. Of course I do 
not object to systems of doctrine. The teacher must 
have his doctrinal scheme. But in teaching a class, 
if he wants to avoid running into a rut, he had better 
take texts or passages as he finds them, study them 
in their connection, and follow out each text or pas- 
sage to its natural results in doctrine and practice. 
Studied in this way — that is, textually rather than 
topically — the Bible presents an endless variety. If 



204 THE TEACHER. 

a preacher discusses from the pulpit in logical order 
the subject of repentance, for instance, or faith, or 
any other great doctrine, he cannot very easily renew 
it Sunday after Sunday without repeating himself. 
But he may expound on one Sunday the case of 
Peter, on another that of Felix, again that of Saul, 
and so on, taking each case with its circumstances, 
and thus ever having something new and different 
from that presented before. 

3. The Illustrations. As with subjects, so with 
illustrations. There is no end to the number of illus- 
trations that may be had for the asking, and no limit 
— almost — to the power which they give over the 
youthful mind. But to most persons they do not 
come unbidden. We must in this matter cultivate 
the inventive faculty. In doing so it is well to study 
the writings of those who are masters of the art, 
and this not for the purpose of borrowing the illus- 
trations made by others, but to get into the spirit of 
it. There is a book called " Illustrative Gatherings* 
from which much may be learned in this line. Read 
every week a chapter from the pen of Dr. Todd or 
Dr. Newton, and see how they enforce every point 
by an apt illustration which makes the doctrine take 
fast hold of the youthful mind. Dr. Guthrie, the 
Scotch preacher, is admirable in this way. A mind 
that has any inventive faculty of its own could hardly 
fail to find out some good, fresh simile after reading 
one of Dr. Guthrie's lectures on the parables. In 
recommending the study of such works, I do not 



THE TEACHER. 205 

advise the teacher to borrow or to imitate the similes 
which he finds. But by habitually reading works 
of this kind his own mind will gradually learn to 
think out apt comparisons. 

4. Freshness. What the teacher needs is to keep 
himself always fresh. Principles are eternal, but 
methods change. There is no one best method of 
teaching or governing. Eternal vigilance must be 
the teacher's motto. Of course there must be some 
stability in the operations of a school or of a class, 
But be ever on the lookout ; and when you find the 
little ones flagging in interest, and the methods which 
for six months or a year seemed to be working won- 
ders now losing their hold, try something else. The 
teacher's business, more even than that of the me- 
chanic, requires invention. The secret of the power 
exercised over young minds by such writers as Jacob 
Abbott and John Todd, and this new French writer, 
Jean Mace, is their marvellous power of invention. 
God has not endowed us all with this gift in an equal 
degree. But it is a faculty that we should cultivate, 
and we may all, by diligent reading and observation, 
keep ourselves familiar with the devices and ingeni- 
ous thoughts of others. 

One of the very best means for a teacher to keep 
himself from monotony and stupefying routine is to 
attend teachers' institutes and conventions. There 
he comes into contact with other minds and is made 
acquainted with other methods. His own mind is 
stirred up, and he returns to his work with new ideas. 

13 



206 THE TEACHER. 

These new ideas are not necessarily better in them- 
selves than the old ones, but they are new, and by 
that very quality have a power and vitality which 
the old ones have ceased to have. 

Another method by which a teacher may deliver 
himself from the bondage of routine is to take a 
teachers' paper. A paper like The Sunday- School 
Times is a sort of permanent institute. The teacher 
in reading it is every week brought into communion 
with other teachers from every part of the land, and 
made familiar with the various methods which the 
ingenious and inventive are devising for the improve- 
ment of schools ; and though ninety-nine out of a 
hundred of these suggestions may be for him im- 
practicable, yet even if the hundredth gives him a 
practicable improvement he is well rewarded. The 
Sunday-school teacher who neglects to take a teach- 
ers' paper must either think himself too wise to need 
instruction, or must- be strangely indifferent to the 
wants of his class. 

Some books are printed from stereotype plates, 
others from movable types, that is, the types are 
reset for each new edition. If the printers will allow 
me to take an illustration from their trade, I would 
say that the teacher's methods should never be stereo- 
typed. Every new edition should be made from 
movable types. 

15. Givi7tg a Definite Lesson* 
A few sections back I spoke of the difference be- 



THE TEACHER. 207 

tween the Sunday-school and other schools. I will 
now notice one at least of the points of resemblance. 

A school of any kind, so far as it is a school at all, 
is a place for definite work. It is not a sort of youths' 
mass-meeting, or a prayer-meeting, or a convention, or 
a religious sociable, but a place for teaching on the one 
side and learning on the other, where lessons are to be 
assigned and definite progress in knowledge is aimed 
at. In the daily school this knowledge is for the 
most part of a secular kind, and there is by the al- 
most universal consent of educators a certain routine 
of studies to be followed. If a child begins his arith- 
metic and goes to school for a certain length of time, 
the parent expects him to be advanced from rule to 
rule until the subject is mastered, and then to take 
up whatever study is next in order. When the child 
comes home in the evening he has his lessons to 
learn for the following day. What would a parent 
think of the school if his children on being interro- 
gated did not seem to know what they were study- 
ing in school — whether they w T ere studying arith- 
metic, or geography, or grammar, or history; or if 
history, w T hether it was the history of France, of Eng- 
land or of the United States — who did not know what 
part of the book they were in, but their teacher took 
up sometimes one part and sometimes another, some- 
times talked about it, and sometimes entertained 
them by reading interesting extracts from the news- 
papers ? 

I am sorry to say this is no" caricature of what is 



208 THE TEACHER, 

done by a good many Sunday-school teachers. The 
hour spent by the teacher with his class is nothing 
more than a pleasant religious sociable. The little 
ones have a good time, get their library books and 
papers, enjoy the singing, and that is all. They 
make no definite progress in religious knowledge. 
They know no more about the contents of the sacred 
volume at the end of the year than they did at the 
beginning. A gentleman told me not many weeks 
since that his children seemed very fond of the 
Sunday-school and of their teacher, but he never 
could find out from them that they had any lessons 
to learn or any preparation to make. They did not 
know whether they were studying in Matthew or 
Genesis or Psalms. They had no question-book, 
they were not required to commit any verses to mem- 
ory. When they came together on the Sabbath the 
teacher selected a chapter, sometimes in one part of 
the Bible, sometimes in another, and read it to them, 
or they read it verse about. Then she talked to 
them about it for a while, and when that failed she 
read to them some of the pretty little stories from 
the Child's Department of the New York Observer. 
Any one going into the school where this teacher is 
engaged, and looking casually at the class, would 
gather the impression that they were legitimately 
engaged in study and recitation. With the excep- 
tion of the Observer part of the business, the whole 
affair may have the appearance of a regular school 
exercise. 



THE TEACHER. 209 

I fear there are a great many such classes and 
teachers, and I desire to raise my voice against it in 
earnest remonstrance. This whole thing is wrong. 
It is an awful wickedness thus to allow the hours of 
religious instruction to run to waste. Every scholar 
who goes to Sunday-school should have some defin- 
ite plan of study placed before him, and should have 
a definite lesson to learn for each session of the 
school. The teacher or the superintendent who has 
no such aim, and allows things to go at loose ends 
in the manner described, has yet to learn what a 
school is. The teacher may not always be able to 
secure from the scholar adequate preparation of the 
lesson assigned. Many parents are grossly derelict 
in this matter, and give no co-operation in regard to 
the Sunday lesson. But in the case to which I have 
referred, the parent was anxious to give this co-oper- 
ation, and gathered his children about him on Sun- 
day evening for the purpose of going over the lesson 
of the next Sunday with them and seeing that they 
had it duly prepared. But no lesson had been as- 
signed. Nor was it a mission-school, with chance 
scholars attending irregularly, coming and going 
according to childish caprice, but a school of con- 
siderable celebrity, in a well-known and influential 
church in one of our large cities. 

Definite lessons and a plan of study are the indis- 
pensable conditions of a school. Just so far as these 
conditions are wanting it ceases to be a school and 
becomes a mere social gathering. The highest state 
18* 



2lO THE TEACHER. 

of efficiency attainable in a Sunday-school is that in 
which all the school has one lesson, the higher and 
the lower classes studying itw T ith varying degrees of 
minuteness, and the superintendent and teachers 
meeting weekly to go over the lesson together. 
When this point cannot be, or is not, gained, the 
next best thing is for all the scholars in a class to 
have the same lesson. There may be good schools, 
however, in some of the classes of which even this 
point is not secured. There may be classes in which 
every scholar is studying on his own hook and re- 
citing separately. But even in this extreme case the 
individual scholar should have a definite lesson 
assigned him and a plan and course of study marked 
out. The teacher who neglects so plain a duty has 
no claim to the name of teacher. He is a mere 
social visitor, who comes to have a pleasant chat 
with the children. The superintendent is unfaithful 
to his stewardship who allows such things to be. 

1 6. Preparation for the Lesson. 

The temerity of undertaking to give a lesson to a 
class without making preparation for it is amazing. 
It is only equalled by the man who undertakes to 
preach without preparation. Teachers complain 
that they have such a hard class, that they have not 
the natural talents and gifts for- the work which God 
has given to others, that they cannot keep the atten- 
tion of their scholars, and so on through the whole 
catalogue of complaints, while the real difficulty half 



THE TEACHER. 21 1 

the time is that they are unwilling to bestow the 
labor needed for suitable preparation. 

There are some teachers in almost every Sunday- 
school who have no regular class, or whose class is 
made up of odds and ends — children just brought 
into the school and not yet assigned to any class, or 
children whose regular teacher is unexpectedly ab- 
sent. Such teachers are very useful. Their work 
is most uninteresting, but not the less important to 
the school. Every superintendent needs one or more 
faithful workers of this kind. Such teachers need a 
weekly preparation for their duties, but not of the 
kind I am now about to speak of. My remarks are 
intended for those who have regular classes and a 
common lesson. 

There is a preparation of a general kind which 
every teacher needs. It is important that every 
teacher should be a person of general information 
and culture, that he should have a good address and 
pleasant manners, which come much more from care 
and painstaking than from nature ; above all, that he 
should have that preparation of the heart which 
comes from earnest, devoted piety. But it is not 
this general preparation which I have now in view. 
What I recommend to the teacher is that he make 
specific preparation for every lesson to his class. 

The lesson to his class. The phraseology is not 
an inadvertence. The lesson of the class is that 
which the class are expected to learn. But teachers 
who mean to be good for anything must learn as 



212 THE TEACHER. 

soon as possible to get rid of the idea that teaching 
is merely hearing recitations. In this interview be- 
tween the teacher and the class, called a recitation, 
not only the scholars must be prepared to bring 
something to the teacher, but the teacher must be 
prepared to bring something to the scholars. Schol- 
ars come to learn as well as to say what they have 
learned. Scholars who have a good teacher always 
come to the class in a spirit of expectancy. See to 
it that this expectant spirit never goes away unre- 
warded. See that you know the lesson more minutely 
and exhaustively than any of your scholars do. A 
teacher may conclude that he has reached the right 
idea on this subject if, when speaking of his work, 
he unconsciously talks of giving a lesson to his class, 
instead of saying that he is going to hear the lesson. 
The teacher who goes to his class without the specific 
preparation which this phraseology implies is just as 
derelict as would be the minister who should go 
into the pulpit without having a prepared sermon, 
or the lawyer who should go into court without 
having studied the case of his client or prepared the 
necessary papers. 

Let us come to particulars. 

i. Committing the Verses to Memory. The 
lesson, as now assigned in most schools, consists of 
a short passage of Scripture, with questions upon it, 
and references. The first thing to be done in the 
preparation of such a lesson — the thing absolutely 
indispensable, the thing which is the foundation of 



THE TEACHER. 213 

everything else, and without which all other labor 
will be merely building upon sand — is to commit 
these verses to memory. That, and that only, is the 
solid rock on which all the superstructure must 
stand. The teacher who is not able, on coming be- 
fore his class, to close his book and repeat the text 
of the lesson without hesitation and without missing 
a word or a syllable, is not prepared. He might 
almost as well undertake to teach reading without 
knowing the alphabet. The first exercise in the 
recitation ought to be for the class to recite the 
verses in this way to the teacher, and the teacher 
ought to be able to follow them in the exercise and 
correct their mistakes without looking at the book 
himself. 

I have adverted to this topic several times already. 
But I am disposed to reiterate the remark and to 
emphasize it, because there is a widely-prevalent 
and mischievous mistake just here. Teachers some- 
times bestow a great deal of labor and research in 
hunting up some far-fetched and perhaps fanciful 
illustration, or going off into some curious theologi- 
cal or antiquarian issue, while neglecting the plain 
truths which lie right on the surface. The first 
thing for scholars and teachers is to know the words 
of the lesson. Let this part of your preparation be 
done thoroughly, not as children often commit to 
memory, being barely able to get through a piece if 
you prompt them every few words. Learn the pas- 
sage as you know the Lord's Prayer or the Ten 



214 THE TEACHER. 

Commandments. The teacher should know the 
words of the lesson from beginning to end, so as to 
be able to say them or hear the children say them 
without having ever to look at the book. This, of 
course, will involve some labor. It is more difficult 
for grown persons to commit to memory than it is 
for children. We may learn a portion of Scripture 
after a fashion without much labor. But to make 
even a dozen verses every week thus thoroughly 
one's own requires time, toil and resolute determina- 
tion. But no toil yields so sure or precious a reward. 
We all have a considerable amount of general in- 
formation about the Scriptures. But how little is 
our stock of precise and thoroughly accurate know- 
ledge of God's Word ! The teacher who every 
week adds to his store only eight or ten verses of 
Holy Scripture, completely mastered and fixed in 
the memory, is insensibly but steadily growing rich 
in Bible lore. Such an acquisition is, in the first 
place, an unspeakable blessing to himself. But be- 
sides this, it gives him a power before his class that 
nothing else can give. It enables him to accomplish 
twice the amount of work in the way of instruction, 
besides the influence which his example will have 
in inducing the children to do the same thing. The 
verses are the foundation for the lesson. If teachers 
and scholars will learn these and have them in their 
memory, they have something to build on. With- 
out this preliminary step all other preparation on 
the part of either teacher or scholar is of little ac- 



THE TEACHER. 215 

count. It is making bricks without straw — almost 
without clay. 

2. The Parallel Texts. The teacher should 
have some definite plan in his mind in regard to the 
parallel texts referred to in the question-book. Some 
teachers commit these to memory and require their 
pupils to do so. Of course there can be no objection 
to such a plan, if a teacher and a class will carry it out. 
But in ordinary cases I would not recommend it. 
Far better that the verses which form the main les- 
son should be thoroughly learned than that both 
the verses and the parallel texts should be half 
learned. The compilers of our question-books have 
not usually bestowed the amount of care upon the 
references which the importance of the subject re- 
quires. References are often made to passages that 
have almost nothing to do with the lesson, and to 
long paragraphs and even to chapters which neither 
teacher nor scholars can be expected to learn. Let 
the teacher examine carefully those parallel texts, 
see exactly how they illustrate the verse referred to, 
prepare himself to point out readily and clearly the 
analogy, and tax his memory with the chapter and 
verse and the exact place in his Bible where the 
parallel passage is to be found, so as to be able at 
once, without a moment's hesitation, to turn to it. 
This is the kind of preparation which I recommend 
the teacher to make, and to urge his pupils to make, 
in regard to the parallel texts. 

3. Use of the Shiest ion- Book. Let the teacher 



2l6 THE TEACHER. 

use the question-book and encourage the pupils to 
use it, for the purpose of aiding to understand the 
passage, or of suggesting some of its practical appli- 
cations. This is the true and only design of a ques- 
tion-book. It is a book to be used in preparing a 
lesson, not in hearing or reciting it. The questions 
often suggest points that may escape the attention of 
the teacher. I would not discard the book, there- 
fore. Only let it be properly used. To use it as is 
commonly done, however, is a great abuse. Noth- 
ing is more common than to see a class and their 
teacher confronting each other, each with question- 
book in one hand and the Bible in the other, the 
teacher reading the question and the pupil reading 
the answer. If those good men who first invented 
our question-books had dreamed that any such abuse 
would have grown out of them, I am sure they 
would have wished their invention at the bottom of 
the sea. Before beginning the recitation let the 
question-book (the teacher's as well as the scholars') 
be collected and piled, and not one of them be 
opened by teacher or scholar until the lesson is over. 
In anticipation of such an experiment as this, the 
teacher's preparatory study of the questions will be 
far different from what it ordinarily is. He will find 
it necessary to get the subject itself, not the mere 
verbal questions, in his mind. ' With his mind full 
of the subject, however, he can frame his own ques- 
tions, if he cannot read those in the book. Be it 
ever remembered, the lesson is not the questions, 



THE TEACHER. 21 7 

but the portion of holy Scripture standing at the 
head. That is what we ought mainly to study. 

4. Additional Illustrations, Let the teacher 
always aim to get some points of information and 
illustration not suggested by the question-book. The 
sources of these are numerous, and vary with the sub- 
ject and the portion of Scripture under review. 
Commentaries, Bible dictionaries, books of travel in 
the Holy Land and Scripture atlases are the chief 
aids in this respect. What I advise is, not a large 
amount of such illustrations, but one or two well- 
selected examples for each lesson, enough to create 
expectancy on the part of the pupils, and let these 
illustrations be so thoroughly prepared and canvassed 
by the teacher in his own mind that there will be no 
hesitation or want of clearness in his mode of pre- 
senting them to the class. The fact that the teacher 
always has some fresh materials of this kind for the 
illustration of the lesson will gradually give him an 
authority and influence over the minds of his schol- 
ars that can be acquired in no other way. The 
children will feel that he is really a teacher, not a 
mere hearer of lessons. 

5. Critical Study of the Meaning. The teacher 
should set himself to study out the meaning of every 
part by the aid of commentaries and works of refer- 
ence. So much has been said on this point that I 
do not think it necessary to dwell upon it. But there 
is one feature in this part of the teacher's prepara- 
tion which is apt to escape the notice of the inex- 

19 



2l8 THE TEACHER. 

perienced. The young teacher is apt to think it is 
quite enough for him if by study and reseaixh he 
actually discovers the meaning of a passage. In 
course of time, however, he awakes to the fact that 
many thoughts which seemed quite clear and plain 
to him at the time of study have somehow gone from 
him when he comes before his class. He finds that 
he must not only hunt up a thing, or think it out, 
but he must then ponder it and turn it over and over 
in his mind, and inquire again and again how he 
would present it to his class, so as to become per- 
fectly familiar w T ith it. This is the difference be- 
tween ordinary knowledge of a thing and that know- 
ledge of it which is needed for the teacher. We 
must he familiar with any thought or subject before 
undertaking to teach it. Knowledge which comes 
to the tongue only after hesitation and by a slow T and 
measured process is of no avail to the teacher. 
Readiness is indispensable to a good teacher. What 
he undertakes to teach to a class should be at the tip 
of his tongue, and this readiness requires something 
more than going over the lesson once, no matter 
how careful that study of it may have been. 

After studying the lesson, therefore, and satisfying 
himself that he understands it thoroughly, let him 
next go over the various points again and again, a 
hundred times if need be, until he knows all the ins 
and outs of the lesson just as familiarly as he knows 
the w r ay to the school-house. This readiness is more 
easy and natural to some than to others, but it is 



THE TEACHER. 219 

within the reach of every one who will take the 
necessary pains. 

6. Practical Thoughts. The teacher in the 
course of his preparation should fix upon a certain 
leading thought, or thoughts, on which to concen- 
trate the thoughts of the class. The Sunday lesson 
should be something more than a mere intellectual 
exercise. It should always have a practical bearing 
upon the moral state and condition of the class. All 
Bible study has for its object not merely intellectual 
knowledge, but the improvement of the heart and of 
the life. No Sunday-school lesson is complete unless 
it conveys some truth which is to affect the heart 
and conduct of the pupils. This is the great differ- 
ence between the Sunday lesson and a lesson in 
arithmetic or grammar. The teacher should ask 
himself, How can I make this a means of spiritual 
benefit to my scholars? What is there in it which 
has a lesson for them in their present condition? and 
how shall I so shape the course of the lesson as to 
bring out this point in an easy and natural manner? 

The lessons assigned in our question-books usually 
contain several such practical suggestions. Some 
of these are more applicable to one class of scholars, 
some to others. The teacher will be most likely, in 
ordinary cases, to accomplish practical results, if 
each Sunday he will limit his exertions to some one 
point. After studying a lesson thoroughly, let him 
think what one of its many teachings is most espe- 
cially suitable to his particular class, and let him lay 



220 THE TEACHER. 

out his strength upon that. Having made this 
selection, he will be surprised, on going over the 
lesson again, how many things he can find in it 
bearing upon that point. 

The teacher fails in his preparation who does not 
mature some definite idea of this kind for each lesson, 
and who leaves this practical application to the im- 
pulse of the moment and the chapter of accidents. 

7. Beginning Early in the Week. Nothing 
can be plainer than that the teacher should begin 
his preparation for the Sunday lesson early in the 
preceding week. The best time is on the Sunday 
evening previous. If the main preparation be made 
then, and the subject be thus early fixed in his mind, 
thoughts and illustrations will be occurring inci- 
dentally all the week long. Having thus prepared 
the lesson on Sunday evening, pondered over it dur- 
ing the week, and given it a careful revision on Sat- 
urday evening, with an earnest cry to the great 
Teacher for help and wisdom, let him go before his 
class on the Sabbath with a full assurance that his 
labor and study will not be in vain. 

8. Seeking Aid from the Great Teacher. Lastly, 
let the teacher not fail to ask and entreat for the 
guidance of the Holy Spirit. In nothing do we so 
much need the aid of the Divine mind as in our at- 
tempts to influence a human mind. Private prayer 
should go hand in hand with private study in every 
stage of the teacher's preparation for his work. 



THE TEACHER. 221 

17. Getting the Scholars to Learn the Lesson. 

Many teachers are studious themselves, but they 
fail to make their scholars studious. The teacher is 
becoming rich in biblical knowledge, but the scholar 
is learning nothing. Such an order of things obvi- 
ously is a grave evil. While the teacher is benefited 
by his work, that benefit is only an incident, not the 
end, of Sunday-school instruction. The school fails of 
its main end if benefits do not accrue to the scholars. 
The school or the class is to a great degree a failure 
if the scholars do not habitually prepare a lesson. 
If they come to school merely to hear explanations, 
merely to be talked to, their coming is not absolutely 
useless, but they might almost as well stay away. 
Real improvement of any kind is not something to 
be received passively, not something which you can 
pour into persons as you would pour water into a 
vessel, not something which you can put on them as 
you would dress them up in fine clothes, but some- 
thing which must grow up within them by the ac- 
tive exertion of their own powers. You might as 
well chew and digest the child's food as to undertake 
to do all his intellectual work for him. There is no 
such thing as learning without study and work on 
the part of the learner. If he studies and works for 
himself, then your work and study in his behalf will 
be a help to him. Otherwise they will be, so 
far as he is concerned, mere water spilled on the 
ground. 
19* 



222 THE TEACHER. 

How can an idle, indifferent scholar be induced to 
prepare his Sunday lesson ? 

Not by railing at him. I have not much faith in 
scolding on any subject, and certainly I never saw 
an idle scholar made industrious by calling him hard 
names and heaping abuse on his head. You may 
thereby make him sullen, or you may drive him from 
school, but you will not make him love study. 

There is nothing that children need so much as 
enconragemejzt. One half the failures in school 
come from the idea which the child has got, that he 
cannot do the thing required. Perhaps he has at- 
tempted it once, and his awkwardness has been 
laughed at. Perhaps he is slow of speech. He has 
not the natural glibness of tongue which some of the 
other children have, and he is driven into silence, 
and then is discouraged altogether, because he thinks 
there is no use of his trying. A Government con- 
tractor, who had been largely concerned in the pur- 
chase and training of mules, informed me once that 
the sullen stubbornness of that animal, which is so 
proverbial as to have given a new word to the dic- 
tionary, is really a mistake in our estimate of the 
animal's character ; that the mulishness of the mule 
is only his timidity and want of confidence in him- 
self; that if you treat him with kindness, awaken in 
him confidence in yourself, try him at first on such 
things only as he plainly sees that he can do, and 
thus gradually educate him to self-confidence, you 
will find him in the end more tractable and docile 



THE TEACHER. 223 

than even the horse. But he must have encourage- 
ment. He is by nature timid and diffident. 

Much of the so-called mulishness of children is 
only timidity driven into sullenness. What is needed 
in such cases is not the sickening flattery in which 
some teachers indulge, but ingenuity in creating in 
the child's mind a spirit of hopefulness, a conviction 
that he as well as the others can do something. 
There is a fine thought on this subject in Virgil. 
He is describing the glow of earnest enthusiasm 
with which the Carthaginians, under Queen Dido, 
are building the walls of their new city. Under 
the influence of this hopeful spirit all the diffi- 
culties in their w T ay seem to vanish ; they achieve 
what is apparently impossible, because it seems 
possible to them. Possunt, quia fosse videntur. 
They are able because they seem to themselves to 
be able ; they could do it because they thought they 
could do it. Making a child think he can master a 
task is half the battle. 

How shall this feeling be created in the mind of a 
child who is naturally timid, or w T ho is really de- 
ficient either in mental training or in mental power? 

One way is to find out something that the child 
can do, and do well — if possible, something that the 
child can do better than any one else in the class. 
The depressing effect of a sense of inferiority is thus 
removed, and in its place springs up hopefulness. 
A most remarkable instance of this kind once came 
under my own observation. .A young lady seemed 



224 THE TEACHER, 

entirely unable to learn the lessons of her class. 
Grammar, geography, arithmetic, history, whatever 
the subject of study was, it seemed equally beyond 
the reach of her capacity. As a consequence, she 
had almost ceased trying to learn. She became in- 
different and careless, showed no ambition, and was 
rapidly falling into habits of recklessness and insub- 
ordination. The first thing that changed the current 
of her thoughts was the accidental discovery that she 
had a talent for drawing. The talent was at once 
fostered. Special opportunities were given for prac- 
tice. Her efforts and successes were brought into no- 
tice by exhibition and commendation. Here was 
something that she could do better than any of her 
classmates. Her countenance, which had heretofore 
been dull and leaden, now lightened up. A spark had 
been kindled, and the heat gradually communicated 
itself to her other faculties. Before long it was noticed 
that in her other lessons she was making progress. 
She became gradually a respectable scholar in all her 
studies. More even than this. The mental impulse 
thus awakened communicated itself to her moral 
nature. Her feelings were touched, her heart was 
aroused, her conscience was softened, she became 
an earnest, hopeful, devoted Christian, and she is 
now practicing her profession as a public teacher 
with marked and signal success. 

Children are always fond of doing anything to 
help their teacher. If you want help of any kind, do 
not call upon your brightest and most forward chil- 



THE TEACHER. 225 

dren, but make it a means of calling into notice some 
obscure and timid member of your class. The mo- 
ment a child of this sort begins to feel that he is of 
some importance, and his ambition is roused, you 
have a hold upon him. 

I have dwelt a little upon this point, of giving en- 
couragement to the backward, because from a large 
experience in the matter I am fully persuaded that 
three-fourths of the indifference to lessons, whether 
in the Sunday-school or in other schools, may be 
traced to a feeling of discouragement or sense of 
mental inferiority. There is no stimulus to mental 
exertion so healthful, so uniform in its action, so cer- 
tain of success, as a spirit of hopefulness growing 
out of actual success. Use your ingenuity in finding 
something to be done, some question to be answered 
which is within the reach of the dullest and most 
perverse child in your class, and when he succeeds 
fail not to reward his success w T ith judicious notice 
and commendation. You will soon find him taking 
an interest and waking up. 

But there are very many things to be done by the 
teacher who has a class that will not study their 
lessons. The first thing, however, for every teacher 
to do who is so situated, is to make up his mind that 
the evil may be corrected and that it shall be cor- 
rected. Remember for yourself the case of the Car- 
thaginians just referred to. You can do the thing 
if you only think so. • Or, forgetting the words of 
Virgil, remember those of the divine Teacher : u All 

P 



226 THE TEACHER. 

things are possible to him that believeth. ,, Settle in 
your mind, therefore, that you can and will succeed 
in getting your scholars to prepare their lessons, 
and success is already assured ; nay, is already half 
achieved. 

1 8. Acquaintance with the General Contents 
of the Scriptures. 

On one point Sunday-school teachers need to use 
their utmost ingenuity and skill, and that is, to make 
their scholars familiar with the contents of the Bible. 
This is no easy achievement. The Bible contains 
so much that few know it thoroughly. We may be 
diligent students of the Word all our lives and yet 
be constantly finding in it something new. But 
there is a kind of knowledge of it which every one 
may attain. Every one may and should know the 
general scope of the Scriptures. He should have 
their outlines so fixed and clear in his mind that he 
can know at once where to turn for any particular 
subject, event or book. 

It is to be feared that this point is overlooked in 
many of our Sunday-schools. Most of the question- 
books in use enter so minutely into the examination 
of particular passages that the scholars lose sight of 
the general scope of Scripture. A large number of 
Sunday-school scholars do not remain in school 
longer than three or four years. Four years in the 
Sunday-school is perhaps the average length of a 
generation. Yet I have known a school spend two 



THE TEACHER. 227 

years in the study of one single book of the Bible. 
If they undertook to master the subject in the thorough 
and exhaustive manner prescribed in the question- 
books, they could not do it in less time, allowing 
for the weeks lost by vacations and other interrup- 
tions. 

I do not wish to discourage this kind of careful 
and exhaustive study of particular parts of Scripture. 
It is in itself very profitable. But it should be alter- 
nated with another and quite different mode of study. 
Every child during the period of its Sunday-school 
life should go once at least through the whole Bible. 
We want a question-book or lesson-book of some 
kind, so general in its outlines that a class or a 
school using it will go through the Bible in a single 
season. Possibly there may be some book or books 
of this kind with which I am not acquainted. If 
so, and my attention were called to them, I would 
gladly help to make them known. I know some 
single volumes which thus go over the whole ground. 
But they are not sufficiently general. They require 
too much. 

The Child's Scripture Question-Book is an admir- 
able compend of Scripture truth, and comes nearer to 
the idea I have in view than any other book I can 
think of. But it is rather a compend of Bible 
doctrine than a compend of the Bible. We want 
something which shall make our children familiar 
with the Bible itself, so that if you speak to them of 
Samson, or Daniel in the lion's den, or the calling 



228 THE TEACHER. 

of Samuel, or the children that mocked Elisha, say- 
ing, " Go up, thou bald head," or the miraculous 
passage of the Red Sea, or the building of the Ark, 
or any of the various scenes in the life of our Saviour, 
if you refer them to any particular book in the 
Bible, to Exodus, or Ezra, or Nahum, or Proverbs, 
or Hebrews, they shall know at once where to 
find it. 

A part of the course of study in every Sunday- 
school should be to have the children learn the order 
of the books in the Bible. Questions or exercises 
of some kind, having this object in view, should 
form a part of the small synoptical volume that I am 
speaking of. It is lamentable to see the manner 
in which some children, and some who are not 
children, go to work to find a text or a topic which 
has been referred to. They seem to know that the 
book of Psalms is somewhere in the middle of the 
Bible, that Genesis is at the beginning and Revela- 
tion at the end, but beyond that they are altogether 
at sea. 

It used to be the fashion, as soon as children could 
read, to set them to reading the Bible through in 
course, and it was a matter of ambition to see how r 
early in life this feat could be accomplished. It was 
even sometimes entered in the family record that 
Edward or James or Susan had read the Bible 
through when he or she was only eight years old, or 
seven, or possibly six. It became, however, in 
course of time, the fashion to sneer at these perform- 



THE TEACHER. 229 

ances, and to ask how much of knowledge or bene- 
fit such youngsters gained by wading through the 
long lists of hard names in the book of Numbers or 
the mysterious utterances of the Hebrew prophets. 
The sneer showed only how ignorant were those 
who uttered it as to a true philosophy of mental de- 
velopment, and it has been a great misfortune that 
parents and teachers had the weakness to listen to it. 
There is no better w r ay for even a young child to get 
a knowledge of the general contents and scope of 
Holy Scripture than to read the Bible straight 
through in course. While much of what he reads 
will be unintelligible to him, much also — more, in- 
deed, than many persons imagine — will make a last- 
ing impression, and the acquaintance it will give 
him with the general outline of the Bible will be the 
very best preparation for the special study of partic- 
ular parts of the Bible. 

I believe the scriptural knowledge of this gen- 
eration would be greatly increased if this good 
old custom could be revived. The benefit would 
be still greater if, at stated intervals through life, 
say at the end of every five years, each individual 
should set apart a year for repeating the process ; 
that is, should read the Bible through in course at 
the age of ten, at the age of fifteen, at the age of 
twenty, and so on to the end of life. How at each 
new general perusal would light flash upon the 
pages from the special studies and experiences 
of the intervening years ! - And how upon each 
20 



23° THE TEACHER. 

special study would help come from his increasing 
familiarity with the Scriptures as a whole ! 

19. Irregular Attendance of Teachers. 

In the actual work of the Sunday-school few 
things are more disheartening than the irregular 
attendance of teachers. I cannot say from certain 
knowledge how extensive the evil is. But in every 
school with which I have ever been connected it has 
been one of the sources of greatest annoyance, dis- 
couragement, and even of dismay, with which the 
superintendent has had to contend. 

It is rare to go into any large Sunday-school and 
not to find one or more teachers absent. The same 
men and women who would not absent themselves 
from a business engagement on a weekday for any 
cause short of sickness, or some imperative necessity, 
will stay away from their class on the Lord's day for 
causes too frivolous to name. The consequences 
are disastrous in the extreme. A class thus deserted 
by its teacher becomes disorderly and noisy, and is a 
source of annoyance to all the rest of the school. 
The children, feeling that their teacher cares little 
for them, lose interest in their lessons and in the 
school, and some imitate the example set them by 
staying away likewise. The superintendent, to pre- 
vent the growing disorder which two or three unoc- 
cupied classes produce in the school, sets some 
chance visitor, or some of the older scholars from 
other classes, to instruct the neglected ones. It is a 



THE TEACHER. 231 

great kindness in the persons thus called upon to 
undertake the work. But it is little usually they can 
do.. They are unacquainted with the children and 
with the lesson, and so the time is pretty much lost 
to the class. 

I fear there is among teachers generally an entirely 
too low standard of duty in this matter. The secret, 
unacknowledged reasoning in the case seems to be 
this : My undertaking to teach the class is altogether 
voluntary. My going to the school at all is a favor 
which I may give or withhold. My engagement to 
be there is quite different from that which binds a 
clerk to be at the office of his employer during the 
appointed hours of business. I may therefore exer- 
cise my own choice whether to go or to stay away. 

Perhaps no teacher ever puts the case in this bold 
way. But it is to be feared, if the real truth were 
known, much of the absenteeism among Sunday- 
school teachers has no better foundation. The en- 
gagement to teach and to be present has no legal 
sanction. The violation of it brings no pecuniary 
penalties. And so it is treated lightly. 

I say these words with sorrow. They imply a 
grievous dereliction of duty on the part of those who 
act thus. A teacher who absents himself from his 
class for any cause which would not make him break 
a business engagement, says in effect that the cause 
of Christ is less dear to him than the cause of his 
fellow-man ; that displeasing Christ is of less import- 
ance to him than displeasing a fellow-man ; that the 



232 THE TEACHER. 

loss of Christ's favor is of less value than the loss of 
money. 

It should be to the teacher just as sacredly a mat- 
ter of conscience to be in his place at the appointed 
time as for the minister to be in his pulpit, for the 
physician to be at the bedside of his patient, for the 
lawyer to be in the court when his client's cause is 
called, for the clerk to be in bank when bank-hour 
comes, or the workman in any worldly business to 
fulfil his engagement to his employer. The teacher 
who undertakes the charge of a class with any lower 
sense of obligation on this subject has no business 
there. He does a grievous wrong to the cause of 
his Lord and Master. 

A teacher is sometimes compelled, by sickness or 
by other imperative and satisfactory cause, to stay 
away from his class. But in such a case he should 
take the same precaution that he does in any other 
business to prevent the evil consequences of his ab- 
sence. The minister who is detained from his 
pulpit provides a substitute. The physician who is 
unable to pay the expected visit to a patient sends 
another physician to take his place. So with 
other engagements where temporal interests of any 
kind are at stake and a fellow-man is the contracting 
party on the other side. Shall we be less scrupulous 
where the interests are those of the soul, and where 
the party in whose service we are engaged and with 
whom we have entered into covenant is the Lord 
Jesus himself? 



THE TEACHER. 233 

If the teacher finds that it will be impossible for 
him to meet his class, two things are binding on 
him. First, he should use his very best endeavor to 
procure a substitute, and the measure of his duty 
should not be less than that of the minister or the 
physician in a like case. If all Sunday-school teach- 
ers had a right sense of duty in this matter, it would 
be asjnuch a cause of surprise and wonderment to 
see a school assembled and a teacher's chair vacant 
as for a congregation to be assembled and see the 
pulpit vacant. Secondly, when the teacher finds 
that he cannot be present, he should make the matter 
known to the superintendent, and at the earliest 
moment possible after the necessity becomes known 
to himself. Nor is this duty discharged by sending 
word to the superintendent by some scholar on his 
way to school. If the superintendent knows it a day 
or two beforehand, particularly in cases where the 
teacher can himself procure no suitable substitute, 
measures may be taken to prevent the injury which 
the absence is likely to produce in the school. But 
a scholar often comes up to the superintendent's 
desk after the school is opened, and says, u Mr. 
Smith requested me to tell you that he went to New 
York Wednesday last ; will you please to get some 
one to take his class to-day !" Of what possible use 
to the superintendent is such a message ? 

20. Visiting Scholars. 

The Sunday teacher is, in some respects, at a dis- 
20* 



234 THE TEACHER. 

advantage, when compared with the ordinary daily 
teacher. The teacher of the weekday-school has 
his scholars five days in the week, five hours a day, 
sometimes more. The studies follow each other in 
regular course ; study and attendance are compul- 
sory, failure in either respect being visited by appro- 
priate penalties. The school-room is furnished with 
maps, globes, desks, blackboards, scientific appa- 
ratus, and all the other means and appliances for 
teaching and study. The Sunday teacher on the 
other hand has the child but one day in the week, 
and on that day but one hour, or at the utmost one 
hour and a half. Indeed, if we take out the time 
spent in opening and closing school, in collecting 
and distributing books and papers, and in other mis- 
cellaneous business, the teacher rarely has left for 
uninterrupted instruction more than three-quarters 
of an hour. From a pretty large acquaintance with 
the subject, I believe this is fully up to the average 
of time actually given to direct instruction in the 
Sunday-school. That is, for teaching religious truth 
and knowledge of Holy Scriptures, which we pro- 
fess to believe to be the most important of all con- 
cerns, we give three-quarters of one hour out of the 
one hundred and sixty-eight hours which make up 
the week. Nor does this state the case fully. At- 
tendance, even for that brief period, and the prepara- 
tion of the lesson, are for the most part considered 
entirely optional, and in point of fact are given with 
much greater irregularity than the attendance upon 



THE TEACHER. 235 

the weekday school and the study of the daily 
lessons. 

Such being the state of the case, the Sunday 
teacher who is anxious to accomplish something 
substantial in the way of religious instruction natur- 
ally avails himself of all the accessory means by 
which his limited time on Sunday may be made as 
efficient as possible. Among these means none is 
more common or more effectual than the occasional 
visiting of his scholars at their homes. I do not 
mean by this that he should give instruction to the 
scholars at their homes, but by visiting them there 
he becomes better acquainted with their condition 
and their mental wants and difficulties. He finds 
out what hindrances they have to contend with, and 
he is enabled to invoke the influence of parents in 
securing regularity of attendance and the proper 
study of the lesson. The visit begets a feeling of 
kindness on the part of the child and of his friends, 
who naturally feel gratified by such a mark of atten- 
tion and interest, particularly if the family are in the 
humble walks of life. The common experience of 
the Sunday-school teacher is that the Sunday lesson 
is very imperfectly prepared. Sometimes this lesson 
is not prepared at all, and very rarely is it prepared 
with that care and thoroughness which mark the 
lessons of the week. The same child that recites its 
lessons in grammar, arithmetic, geography and his- 
tory without hesitating and without missing a word, 
will come to the recitation of its Bible lesson with 



236 THE TEACHER. 

only the most dim and vague recollection of its con- 
tents. The Sunday lesson usually consists of a cer- 
tain number of verses to be committed to memory, 
with questions intended to illustrate and draw out 
their meaning and application. It has become very 
common for children to omit entirely committing 
these verses to memory. In this matter the parents 
are the ones to correct the evil, and in most in- 
stances would do so if the case were properly stated 
to them by the teacher on the occasion of his visit. 
It is not exaggeration to say that the amount of in- 
struction given in the Sunday-school would be 
doubled if all the scholars would habitually come 
to the class with the Bible verses of the lesson 
thoroughly committed to memory. This is one way, 
then, in which the time of the teacher with his class 
may be made more efficient, and there is no means 
by which this can be so effectually brought about as 
by a visit from the teacher to the child, at his own 
home. 

I have spoken thus far merely of religious instruc- 
tion. The argument drawn from the personal influ- 
ence acquired by the teacher in these visits is still 
stronger, but I have not time to dwell upon it. Suf- 
fice it to say that the teacher thereby gains numer- 
ous and most favorable opportunities for bringing 
home the subject of personal religion to the child 
and sometimes to the other members of the house- 
hold. 

No definite rule can be given in regard to the 



THE TEACHER, 237 

frequency of these visits. It depends upon the cir- 
cumstances of each particular class and scholar. 
Some scholars need visiting as often as once a 
month. In other cases a visit once or twice a year 
is sufficient. There is little danger, however, of 
over-doing the matter. 

In regard to visiting scholars, the following points 
may be considered as settled: 1. Every scholar 
should be visited in case of his absence from the 
class, and this visit should be made as soon after the 
absence as possible. 2. Every scholar should be 
visited occasionally. 3. Teachers should make a 
business of visiting all their scholars immediately 
after the summer vacation. 

21. Keeping up with the Times. 

The Sunday-school man is essentially a man of 
progress. We feel at once an incongruity when we 
think of him in any other light. The institution 
itself was born of progress, and belongs to the new 
order of things. It is one of the subjects on which 
the church, dissatisfied with past shortcomings, has 
made a bold and free step in advance. Whoever is 
engaged in this advanced enterprise would seem, by 
the very nature of his occupation, to be committed to 
the principles and the spirit of progress. Yet there 
are not wanting among our Sunday-school people 
indications of a spirit, if not opposed to improve- 
ment, yet timid, hesitating, indifferent, retrograde. 
Of course, I have nothing to say against genuine 



238 THE TEACHER. 

conservatism, meaning by that term the disposition 
to hold on to whatever is good. But there is a con- 
servatism which consists in holding on to whatever 
has been once established, whether bad or good. If it 
is only one of the things that used to be in the olden 
time, that fact alone hallows it. Against such con- 
servatism the earnest Sunday-school man feels bound 
to protest and contend. He is what we call a live 
man, one thoroughly wide awake. He does not re- 
ject a thing without examination because it is new, 
nor cleave to a thing against his judgment because 
it is old. While projects and schemes never before 
heard of are admitted to a hearing, and if they make 
a reasonable show are admitted to trial also, methods 
and practices that have been in use for generations 
are not thereby exempt from respectful inquiry, and 
if found on sober examination to be wrong, are not 
exempt from reform. 

The Sunday-school man, however, is not a de- 
structive. On the contrary, he is as truly a genuine 
conservative as he is a progressive. He aims on 
the one hand to keep whatever is good and desirable 
in that which has come down to us from the past, 
and on the other hand to seize with eager welcome 
whatever real improvement the present order of 
things brings him. 

The Sunday-school man, therefore, if he would be 
true to the character which his position would seem 
to impose, must be a man of the progressive order, 
thoroughly wide awake to every real improvement 



THE TEACHER. 239 

in his work. What are some of the ways by which 
he can aid himself in keeping up to the times? 

1. He should take a Teachers' Pafer. The 
teacher who takes no teachers' paper can hardly ex- 
pect to keep pace with the current of opinion and 
improvement. This Sunday-school work has be- 
come an important department of human effort. The 
workers in it are numbered by hundreds of thousands. 
Many of them are not mere men of routine, but are 
men of thought, originality, invention, enterprise. 
Experiments of high moment are going on continu- 
ally in every department of the work. Reports and 
discussions of these fill the columns of papers de- 
voted to this particular subject. Almost every con- 
ceivable question that can be raised, either in regard 
to the work to be done or the manner of doing it, is 
there discussed. Can a teacher who would claim to 
be a live man afford to be without such a paper? 

To state the question would seem to be to answer 
it. The proposition which it involves seems to ad- 
dress itself at once to the intuitive perceptions of men. 
Yet as a question of fact the duty is ignored by almost 
the entire body of Christian men and women who 
are engaged in the business of Sunday-school teach- 
ing. I do not believe that more than one teacher out 
of two hundred takes a teachers' paper. Should this 
be so? Is there not some duty in this matter? Does 
not a weekly paper, giving in compact form the 
latest and ripest thoughts of the wisest and most ex- 
perienced workers in the cause, furnish a means of 



24° THE TEACHER. 

self-improvement which a conscientious teacher can- 
not well forego ? Do not the recorded experiences, 
the suggestive anecdotes, the earnest appeals, the 
useful hints as to improved methods for managing 
libraries and class-rolls and for conducting the vari- 
ous machinery of a school, — do not these suggestive 
and varied practical details with which its columns 
abound from week to week furnish the teacher regu- 
larly and surely with matter which he urgently needs 
and which he cannot get elsewhere? 

Taking a religious paper of some kind does not 
meet the case. Every man expects of course to take 
the weekly religious paper of his own denomination. 
But this does not fill his want as a teacher any more 
than occupying his pew in church would render it 
unnecessary for him to be in his place in school. 
For his special work as a teacher he needs a paper 
devoted to this specialty just as much as the intelli- 
gent farmer or mechanic, the florist, the gardener, 
the builder does, each in his own special calling. 
Our good brother Pardee used to tell us instances of 
the mistakes of Sunday-school men on this subject 
which would be ludicrous were it not for the serious- 
ness of the consequences involved. After visiting a 
village and spending three or four days with the 
teachers, holding what is called an " Institute," and 
explaining to them in his pleasant, practical way just 
how this, that, or the other thing is done, the teachers 
would gather round him full of enthusiasm, wonder- 
ing that they had never heard of these things before, 



THE TEACHER. 241 

and zealous to hear more. " Do tell us, brother, 
where we can find out more about these things?" 
u I have not told you a thing that you will not find 
explained and discussed all the year round in The 
Sunday- School Times. You take that paper, of 
course?" " Why, no. I take, you know, my own 

church paper, the , and one religious paper 

seems to be enough." 

2. He should have a Teachers' Library. Be- 
sides reading a teachers' paper, there are many books 
devoted to the explanation and discussion of the Sun- 
day-school work with which the Sunday-school 
teacher should be familiar. As a lawyer has a law 
library and a doctor a medical library, so a teacher 
should have a teachers' library. This library should 
include not merely books suited to give him progress 
in Christian knowledge and culture, such as all Chris- 
tians need, not merely the commentaries and other 
books needed to aid him in preparing the lesson, but 
books on teaching, in which all that pertains to the 
art and mystery of the profession is discussed, and 
especially books written specifically about Sunday- 
schools, explaining their rise, progress, development, 
object and methods. We are beginning to be quite 
rich in our literature on this subject. The teacher 
who is up to the times will spend some money in 
stocking his shelves with the books pertaining to his 
business, and some time in stocking his mind with 
their contents. 

3. He should attend Conventions. There is still 
21 Q 



242 THE TEACHER. 

another means of improvement which the really wide- 
awake man will not willingly miss. By nothing are 
our faculties so soon quickened as by actual contact 
with wide-awake people. It is a great mistake for a 
Sunday-school man to shut himself up in his shell. 
Let him gladly embrace every fitting opportunity for 
meeting his fellow-laborers in Teachers' Institutes 
and Conventions. No doubt there is usually some 
chaff in these meetings, but there is also generally 
good, pure wheat. I never attended a Sunday-school 
Convention yet that I did not bring away from it 
some valuable thought. Besides, in many parts of 
the country, these meetings, under the name of Insti- 
tutes, have become real practical, working affairs. 
I urge very strongly upon all teachers the duty and 
policy of mingling more than they generally do with 
other teachers for the purpose of comparing notes 
and of learning what others are doing. 

Is teaching the only business in which no advan- 
tage is to be taken of the experience of others? Are 
teachers the only workmen who are above or below 
being profited by suggestion, advice and example? 
Are the teachers of our Sunday-schools generally so 
thoroughly skillful and so completely furnished for 
their work that they need no help from any quarter? 
Does no intelligence reach us from any quarter, of 
schools verging toward dissolution because of the 
irregularities and disorders which the teachers know 
not how either to quell or prevent? — of classes which 
are a nuisance to all the rest of the school to which 



THE TEACHER. 243 

they belong because of the rude behavior, the loud 
talking and the irregular attendance of the mem- 
bers? — of scholars who never learn their Sunday les- 
son, though perfect in the lessons of the weekday- 
school, and who do not attend the Sunday-school 
more than one-half or one-third the time, though 
never absent from school during the week ? 





CHAPTER V. 

TEACHERS IN COUNCIL, 

j|N the previous chapter the discussion has 
been limited for the most part to those 
topics in which each teacher necessarily 
acts by and for himself. But many things in this 
great Sunday-school work require co-operative ac- 
tion. Teachers must confer together in various 
ways and in greater or smaller numbers if they 
would reap the full fruit of their labors. I propose, 
therefore, in the present chapter to consider some of 
those various meetings held by Sunday-school men 
under the names of Conventions, Institutes, Teach- 
ers' Meetings and Teachers' Normal Classes. 

The object, in all such gatherings, is improve- 
ment in the means of carrying on the work, and 
especially improvement in the qualifications of 
teachers. 

I. Such Gatherings Needed. 

That there is need of some agency for the ac- 
complishment of these ends is evident. Of the 
four hundred thousand teachers who are guiding 
244 



TEACHERS IN COUNCIL. 245 

and sustaining this great work of Sunday-school in- 
struction, probably less than one-tenth have ever had 
any regular professional training for the business 
of teaching. Let us think for a moment what this 
fact implies. There are, it may be, at this very 
time, in the United States, four hundred thousand 
steam engines at work, propelling boats or drawing 
trains of cars laden with human beings. Would it 
not be accounted an act of suicidal madness and in- 
fatuation if nine out of ten of the engineers by 
whom these precious burdens are hurried along 
were allowed to be persons not professionally trained 
to the business of an engineer? — if they were taken, 
in fact, haphazard from the passengers on the spur 
of the occasion? Is the business of a teacher any 
less responsible than that of an engineer ? Is there 
any less risk in guiding an immortal soul along the 
path of eternal life than in guiding a steam engine 
along its appointed track? Shall the children of 
this world always be wiser than the children of 
light? Shall worldly men be more careful of risks, 
where only a few dollars are at stake, than the 
people of God, where the stake is eternal life? 

Why should not our theological seminaries make 
some provision on the subject? A young man goes 
to a theological seminary for the purpose of being 
fitted and trained for the pastoral office. In the 
providence of God and the practical working of 
Christian institutions at this time, a large part of the 
pastor's work — that part of his work, too, which is 
21 * 



246 TEACHERS IN COUNCIL. 

most productive of results — lies among the young of 
his flock. There is not probably a really successful 
worker in the pastoral office, in any Protestant 
church in the United States, who does not feel that 
the Sunday-school stands second only to the pulpit 
among his agencies for carrying forward his Master's 
work. Do our theological students receive in the 
seminary any adequate instruction and training for 
this part of their duty ? They are told there how to 
expound the word to the people, how to preach, 
how to manage the adult portions of their congrega- 
tions ; are they told how to manage their Sunday- 
schools? Are they told how to train up a corps of 
faithful and efficient teachers ? 

The pastors of several congregations, whether 
of the same denomination or of different denomina- 
tions, might, by a little conference, get up among 
themselves, with the aid perhaps of one or more 
special lecturers from abroad, a systematic course of 
instruction for a local Normal Institute. However 
feebly or imperfectly carried out, such a plan could 
not fail of doing some good. The pastors would of 
course succeed better in such an enterprise, if them- 
selves trained to it in the seminary, as they are 
trained to writing sermons and to preaching. But 
without such instruction they can accomplish much. 
If the pastors and superintendents of any one town, 
village, or neighborhood would come together and 
have a free conference as to the best means of im- 
proving the qualifications of their Sunday-school 



TEACHERS IN COUNCIL. 247 

teachers — nay, if only the pastor and superintendent 
and two or three of the most thoughtful members of 
a single congregation would thus confer, and fairly 
set some plan in motion, no matter how incomplete 
the plan might be — good would come of it. What 
we are suffering from is patient indifference and 
quiescence in the present state of things. 

Let me speak plainly. Our schools are taught by 
those who know not how to teach. Of course there 
are many brilliant exceptions. I speak only of the 
general fact. Yet these unskilled teachers, with all 
their imperfections as teachers, are among the no- 
blest Christians in the land. No one knows so well 
as they themselves do the extent of their deficiencies 
and imperfections. No one longs as they do for the 
knowledge and the skill to do better. Their hearts 
ache for the longing they have to serve the Master 
efficiently in this glorious cause. There is no fear 
that they will not respond to any well-considered 
and practical plan by which their talents may be 
guided and their laborious services made more 
effectual. What the leaders in Israel, the wise men 
in the church, the ministers and superintendents, the 
working and thinking men of large hearts and long 
heads, owe to this cause, is the devising and matur- 
ing of plans for the improvement of our Sunday- 
school teachers. Our schools will never accomplish 
what they should do until our teachers know better 
how to teach and what to teach. Our teachers must 
themselves be taught. Whoever shall devise the 



248 TEACHERS IN COUNCIL. 

means of doing this effectually will help forward 
the great cause as much as if he were to put a hun- 
dred missionaries in the field. 

2. State Conventions. 

Should our State conventions be denominational 
or should they be union meetings ? 

It seems to me that in this matter there is no 
necessary antagonism between denominational inter- 
ests and the interests which are common to all. On 
the contrary, a right understanding of the subject 
will promote both — will make both union move- 
ments and ecclesiastical movements more effective. 

In the first place let me say, I have always advo- 
cated and urged ecclesiastical action on the subject 
of Sunday-schools. How any church that has any 
proper comprehension of its mission as an agency 
for the propagation of Christianity, or of the place 
that education holds among the means for spreading 
and perpetuating true religion, can avoid taking ac- 
tion as a church in this work of the religious teach- 
ing and training of the young passes comprehension. 
I hold that every church (that is, every separate 
congregation) is bound to engage actively and ef- 
fectually, in its organized capacity as a church, in 
this Sunday-school work. A church that neglects 
to provide for the religious instruction of the chil- 
dren is as truly guilty before God as if it neglected 
to provide for pulpit ministrations. The session, 
consistory, vestry, or whatever body is charged with 



TEACHERS IN COUNCIL. 249 

the spiritual oversight of the congregation, is bound 
to see that there is a Sunday-school, and that it is 
rightly and efficiently managed and taught. In 
whose hands the management of the school should 
be is a question of time and circumstance. But the 
church as such should see that the work is done, 
and well done, and should throw the weight of 
its official character and influence into the work. 
Office-bearing in the church, in other -words, should 
be seen in something more than in merely its nega- 
tive character, its power of excluding measures or 
men of an improper sort. It should rather and 
mainly be felt as a positive propelling power in 
every good word and work. 

In like manner the various ecclesiastical bodies in 
which the interests of many individual churches are 
represented, the Presbyteries, Classes, Conferences, 
Synods, etc., have other than mere rectoral or gov- 
ernmental duties. It is one of the pleasant signs of 
the times that at many of these convocations the 
wants of the Sunday-school are brought prominently 
forward, and a part of the sessions of the body have 
almost the appearance of a Sunday-school festival, 
— children, teachers, parents, whole congregations, 
meeting with the venerable body of pastors in some 
special service appropriate to the occasion. One of 
the standing committees in many of these bodies 
now is the committee on Sunday-schools, and many 
of the topics discussed are precisely the same as 
those discussed in a Sunday-school convention, 



250 TEACHERS IN COUNCIL. 

such as the qualifications of teachers, methods of 
teaching, Sunday-school music, the early conver- 
sion of children, etc. I hope to see the time when, 
in every ecclesiastical council, of whatever name or 
magnitude, a part, and no small part, of its regular 
business, shall consist in action on Sunday-school 
matters, and its sessions shall be looked forward to 
and attended upon by Sunday-school teachers and 
Sunday-school children, by parents and by whole 
congregations, with that same feeling of personal 
interest with which a whole population will now 
turn out to a heart-warming, fire-enkindling Sunday- 
school convention. 

But there are some who, in addition to this intro- 
duction of the Sunday-school cause into ecclesias- 
tical convocations, would have each denomination 
hold a separate Sunday-school convention of its 
own, both of the State and the county, and on this 
point I am at issue with them. This is a multipli- 
cation of machinery entirely uncalled for and un- 
necessary. The Sunday-school workers of any 
denomination have in their regular ecclesiastical 
councils all the machinery they need for conference 
and counsel and the prosecution of their work as a 
denomination. But in this Sunday-school work we 
naturally desire to profit by the skill and experience 
of those outside of our own pale. We therefore 
come together in State and county conventions in 
which all denominations are represented. Improve- 
ment in such matters comes by comparison. Few 



TEACHERS IN COUNCIL. 251 

ever attended one of these large union meetings 
without feeling that he had learned something new, 
and without having received a fresh impulse, such 
as he would not have received in any meeting com- 
posed exclusively of those of his own particular way 
of thinking. No one can be much conversant with 
the Sunday-school work of our day without feeling 
that the Spirit has bestowed special gifts in this 
matter to one and another, here and there, in 
different churches, and that if we are to have 
Sunday-school conventions at all, and derive from 
them the full benefits that they are suited to 
give, they should be union conventions, where the 
best workers and thinkers of all denominations 
may be brought together in holy and fraternal 
counsel. 

I would urge then these two things : First, let 
each denomination, through all its official and or- 
ganized agencies as a denomination, take up and 
push forward the Sunday-school cause to the utmost 
of its strength. The more any church pushes its 
own schools, the greater and more beneficial will be 
the impulse it will give to the schools of other 
churches. Secondly, let the Sunday-school workers 
of all denominations meet yearly in county and 
State associations of a union character, for the pur- 
pose of discussing those questions of a general 
nature which belong equally to Christians of every 
name. Denominational activity, through the regular 
ecclesiastical channels, will help the union meeting. 



252 TEACHERS IN COUNCIL. 

The union meeting will react most kindly and benef- 
icently upon the ecclesiastical council. There is no 
antagonism between the two. On the contrary, 
each helps the other. 

But it will be in vain to attempt to have union 
Sunday-school associations, whether for the county 
or the State, if there are to be denominational asso- 
ciations for the same purpose. The majority both 
of ministers and laymen have not the time, and can- 
not afford the expense of attending more than one 
such meeting. If the denominational association is 
maintained, it will kill the union association, and 
between the two I certainly think the union meeting 
vastly the more important and necessary. 

My view of the matter may be summed up in a 
dozen words. Church action in the Sunday-school 
cause — union action in Sunday-school conventions. 

3. County Conventions. 

The first rule to be observed in regard to all such 
gatherings is, make ample preparation. Those who 
originate the movement must not imagine that a 
mere announcement that a meeting is to be held at a 
certain time and place will be sufficient. They must 
bestir themselves diligently in making the thing 
thoroughly known and talked of all through the 
county. Ample time should, be allowed between 
the issuing of the call and the time for holding the 
meeting. Handbills, circulars, pulpit notices and 
newspaper notices should all be put in requisition. 



TEACHERS IN COUNCIL. 253 

The newspapers are always ready to co-operate in 
any such enterprise, and lend their columns freely, 
both in giving notice of the meetings and in report- 
ing their proceedings. Get the ministers to urge 
their people to attend. 

The convention should be held at a convenient 
and central place. The county town is a good place 
for the first convention. If the first is a success, 
there will be plenty of places eager for the privilege 
of entertaining the second, and others which may fol- 
low. Hold it in the largest church, and see that the 
church is well filled at each session. 

Select such a time as will suit the greatest number 
of people, remembering that it is impossible to suit 
everybody, and that if you wait for a time which will 
suit everybody you will indefinitely postpone your 
convention. Two or three days will generally be 
found enough to continue the convention. In some 
places it is well to hold it in the middle of the week ; 
in others at the end of the week, closing with a grand 
children's meeting and other public exercises on the 
Lord's day. In other places it is well to commence 
on Sunday with such sermons, children's meetings, 
etc., as may be thought best. The circumstances 
differ so greatly in different places that no outside 
suggestion in this respect is as good as that which 
the residents of the place where the convention is 
held can devise for themselves. 

When the convention' assembles let it be with a 
prayerful spirit of earnest devotion to the work, and 
22 



254 TEACHERS IN COUNCIL. 

with a determination not to waste a moment in any- 
thing foreign to the purpose for which the people 
have been called together. 

Select for officers the men who will best fulfil the 
duties required of them. . 

Very much depends on the Chairman. A dull 
chairman can put the convention to death in short 
order. An earnest man, prompt, decided, courteous, 
well acquainted with the rules of deliberative bodies, 
will contribute much toward making the convention 
a success. The chairman should keep the meetings 
moving briskly, confine speakers in discussion to the 
subject announced to be discussed, and have courage 
enough to stop, without respect of persons, any 
speaker who exceeds his allotted time, if a certain 
time has been allotted. 

Much depends also upon getting a good Secretary. 
He need not be a man of great gifts as a speaker, but 
he should possess the pen of a ready writer, and 
should be a man of accurate habits ; otherwise the 
minutes of the convention will be of very little use. 
If there is no newspaper reporter present, the secre- 
tary may make himself useful by furnishing a report 
of the proceedings to the newspapers. 

The expenses of the convention should be met by 
subscription or collection, ano! not laid on any one 
individual. The amount of money required, even 
for a most excellent convention, is so small that it 
will hardly be felt if collected from all who are pres- 
ent. Always secure funds enough to save the gentle- 



TEACHERS IN COUNCIL, 255 

men who get up the convention from the annoyance 
of outstanding bills. It is well, also, at each con- 
vention to secure a sufficient amount to put the County 
Secretary in funds for the. work expected of him for 
the year. He will be at some expense for stationery, 
postage, travelling, etc., and it is right that he should 
not be asked either to incur these expenses himself 
or to advance the necessary amount from his own 
pocket. 

Discussions of topics of interest in the various 
branches of the work may well consume a large part 
of the time of the convention. Select your topics 
with care and with a view to the most practical and 
profitable remarks. One hour at each session may 
well be spent in discussion. 

Somebody should be appointed to open the discus- 
sion on each subject. Allow him ten minutes. The 
other speakers on the subject may be allowed less — 
say five minutes. But it is hard to say exactly how 
many minutes each man should speak. If a man 
discovers on rising that what he has to say will not 
hold out for more than two minutes, he is under no 
obligation to spin it out to five merely to consume 
the time. Three-minute speeches have been very 
much in vogue, but the fact is that there are very few 
people who can say a great deal in so short a time. 
Whether a speech is long or short, it is unwise to 
begin it with an apology ; it is an unnecessary ex- 
penditure of precious time. The chairman should 
confine the speakers to the subject under discussion, 



256 TEACHERS IN COUNCIL. 

and firmly but courteously cause each speaker to 
conclude when his time expires. 

Bring out your home talent in discussion as much 
as possible, and let no man be afraid to speak on ac- 
count of youth, inexperience or supposed lack of or- 
atorical ability. It is very important that the discus- 
sion be thrown open as widely as possible rather 
than conducted by a few persons. 

Statistics, if they have been carefully collected so 
as to be reliable, are very valuable. It is tedious 
business, however, to read them, and few people 
have such memories as to remember them on hear- 
ing them read. It is better to print and distribute 
them ; and the Secretary, when he makes his report 
or speech about them, can give grand totals on the 
blackboard, with the certainty that this will be more 
acceptable to his hearers and more profitable than 
the reading of a long string of figures. 

Children's meetings may profitably be held in con- 
nection with almost every convention. There is no 
trouble in filling the largest church with the children. 
Have plenty of good singing. Three or four speeches 
will be enough. It is very difficult to say how long 
they ought to be. While it is well to make them 
short, remember that brevity is not the only merit 
of a talk to children. Some men can interest chil- 
dren for three-quarters of an hour, while others have 
a way of putting them to sleep in five minutes. The 
latter may as a general rule be excused from address- 
ing children's meetings. 



TEACHERS IN COUNCIL. 257 

Above all things try to make these meetings prof- 
itable as well as interesting. Amusement is well 
in proper time and place, but mere amusement is 
decidedly out of place at such gatherings. The 
speaker who will give the children a practical re- 
ligious talk, full of rich illustration, accompanying it 
sometimes with a little exposition of some passage 
of Scripture, w 7 ill do little people more good than he 
who merely entertains them with story-telling. Do 
not weary them. An hour and a half is long enough 
for a children's meeting. It is a sin to keep it over 
two hours. 

4. County Institutes. 

An Institute is something different from a conven- 
tion, and still more from a mass meeting. In a con- 
vention people meet more or less in a delegated ca- 
pacity and for the purpose of mutual conference, 
consultation and deliberative action. All the mem- 
bers are on an equal footing, electing their officers 
and controlling their own proceedings. They meet 
to tell each other what their experience in the good 
work has been, to exhort each other and to pass res- 
olutions. An institute is altogether a different affair. 
It is rather a temporary school, in which a certain 
number of speakers are present by invitation as in- 
structors or teachers, and the others are learners. 
They do not meet to deliberate and resolve, but to 
teach and learn. The' more rigidly the exercises 
can be confined to this idea the more profitable as 
22* R 



258 TEACHERS IN COUNCIL. 

well as distinctive the institute will become. All 
"five-minute" speeches or "one-minute" speeches 
or pop-gun exercises of any kind for the purpose of 
letting off gas are out of place. Extempore talk, vol- 
unteering, making apologies, speeches of welcome, 
resolutions of thanks — resolutions indeed of any kind 
— are all and equally at a discount. They are all in 
place at a convention and out of place at an institute. 
The institute is for instruction. Those who compose 
it are divided into two classes, teachers and scholars, 
and the exercises should be based on this idea. There 
should be, as in a school, a regular and exact pro- 
gramme, fixed beforehand, and filling up the entire 
time with a consecutive series of carefully prepared 
lessons or lectures, and without even a minute for 
any sort of extemporaneous fumbling. 

While the institute and the convention are so un- 
like in object and in their methods of procedure, 
there is one point at least in which they agree. Both 
should be pervaded with a spirit of prayer. It is 
well in both to begin each session with a definite 
season, say fifteen or twenty minutes, for devotional 
exercises. 

The "question drawer" is a useful part of the ma- 
chinery of an institute. It gives opportunity for 
drawing out the opinions of the teachers or leaders 
of the institute on many points not covered by the 
regular exercises. The questions ought to be sent 
in at one session and answered at the next, so that 
the answerers may have time to prepare themselves ; 



TEACHERS IN COUNCIL. 259 

and the answers should be simple, direct statements 
of opinion, without going into any argument or de- 
fence of the positions assumed. 

The proper way to get up an institute is for some 
association of teachers or convention to resolve to 
have one, and to appoint a conductor and a suitable 
committee for carrying the project into effect. The 
convention or association which resolves upon an 
institute should also provide the means for holding 
it. An institute that is good for anything costs 
something. The teachers who give up their busi- 
ness for two or three days, besides being at expense 
for travelling, etc., for the sake of learning some- 
thing about their work and how to do it, think 
it poor economy to lose their time and labor for 
the sake of saving a few dollars in the bill of ex- 
penses. 

The proper time for holding an institute differs, 
according as it is held in the city or country. In a 
large city, where all the teachers who are to attend 
are present, it is best usually to hold the institute 
only in the afternoon and evening, and sometimes 
only in the evening. Six successive evenings, or 
four successive afternoons and evenings, make a good 
institute for a city. The members in such a case 
attend to their regular worldly business in the morn- 
ing and to the institute in the afternoon and evening. 
In the country the case is different. The large body 
of those attending have to be away from home. In all 
such cases the number of days should be fewer. Two 



260 TEACHERS IN COUNCIL. 

full days, with morning, afternoon and evening ses- 
sions on each day, make a good institute. Men who 
will give up their entire time for two successive 
days, having a session of three hours in the morning, 
three in the afternoon and two or three in the even- 
ing may learn a good deal if the programme is 
worth anything. 

Institute Programme. In making up a pro- 
gramme no little judgment is to be exercised so as to 
have due regard to variety and to apportioning the 
time to the character of the several exercises. Some 
topics can be satisfactorily disposed of in fifteen 
minutes, others require thirty or forty minutes. The 
time table should be as definite and should be ad- 
hered to as closely as that of a railroad. Nothing 
should be at loose ends or hap-hazard. 

One of the best programmes that I have seen of 
an institute was that held in Morristown, New Jer- 
sey, in November, 1867. The institute occupied 
two days. The sessions were from half past ten to 
twelve, from two to five and from seven to ten on 
Wednesday, and a like arrangement on Thursday 
except that on that day they began at half past nine. 
In all they were in session sixteen hours. 

Each session began with a devotional exercise of 
twenty minutes, occupying two hours out of the six- 
teen. The remaining fourteen hours were divided 
into periods of varying length, from fifteen minutes 
to sixty minutes, there being, however, but one exer- 
cise of the latter length, namely, an infant class 



TEACHERS IN COUNCIL. 261 

lesson by Ralph Wells. The following is an ab- 
stract of this programme : 

Programme of an Institute held in Morristown, 
N. y., November, 1867. 

Wednesday Morning. 

I. 30 minutes. — Opening Exercises. Partly devotional, partly " address of 
welcome." The latter part might have been omitted without injury. 

II. 40 minutes. — The work of the Sunday-school Teacher. Rev. Thomas S. 
Hastings. 

III. 15 minutes. — The Superintendent. R. G. Pardee. 

IV. 5 minutes. — "One-minute" speeches from five different persons, volun- 
teers. 

Wednesday Afternoon. 

I. 20 minutes. — Devotional. Hon. John Hill, conductor. 

II. 40 minutes. — Lecture on Sacred Geography. Rev. Arthur Mitchell. 

III. 40 minutes. — Various uses of the Blackboard. Ralph Wells. 

IV. 40 minutes. — Order of exercises in Sunday-school. A. Baldwin and 
Ralph Wells. 

V. 40 minutes. — Question Box. R. G. Pardee and Ralph Wells. 

Wednesday Evening. 

I. 20 minutes. — Devotional. Rev. H. A. Butts, conductor. 

II. 25 minutes. — Principles of Infant Class Teaching. Rev. J. M. Freeman. 

III. 60 minutes. — Infant Class Lesson. Ralph Wells. 

IV. 30 minutes. — Teacher Preparation. L. P. Cummings. 

V. 45 minutes. — Fifteen "three-minute" addresses. 

Thursday Morning. 

I. 20 minutes. — Devotional. Hon. George T. Cobb, conductor. 

II. 30 minutes. — Principles of Illustrative Teaching. Rev. J. M. Freeman. 

III. 40 minutes. — Peculiar Wants of Sunday-schools in Rural Districts. A. 
Baldwin, Rev. J. M. Johnson and R. G. Pardee. 

IV. 30 minutes. — Teacher Teaching. Ralph Wells. 

V. 30 minutes. — Teachers' Meetings. Andrew A. Smith. 

Thursday Afternoon. 

I. 20 minutes. — Devotional. Rev. S. Smith, conductor. 

II. 25 minutes. — Blackboard Uses and Picture Teaching. R. G. Pardee. 



262 TEACHERS IN COUNCIL. 

III. 20 minutes.— Relation of the Sunday-school to the Family. Rev. J. M. 
Freeman. 

IV. 20 minutes. — Sunday-school Music. Lucius Hart. 

V. 15 minutes. — Three "five-minute" Volunteers. 

VI. 25 minutes. — How shall we interest our children to labor for Jesus? 

VII. 25 minutes. — Question Box. 

VIII. 30 minutes. — Address. Rev. C. S. Robinson, d.d. 

Thursday Evening. 

I. 20 minutes. — Devotional. Rev. A. Mitchell, conductor. 

II. 20 minutes. — Mission Sunday-schools. Rev. H. A. Butts. 

III. 45 minutes. — Bible Lesson. Andrew A. Smith. 

IV. 15 minutes. — Importance of Inducing the Scholars to commit Scripture 
Truths to memory. Rev. Sanford Smith. 

V. 30 minutes. — Privileges and Rewards of Sunday-school Teachers. Rev. 
R. J. W. Buckland. 

VI. 50 minutes. — " Ten addresses of five minutes each." 

It is desirable, as a matter of theory, that there 
should be a variety and frequent change in the exer- 
cises of an institute, and that all the exercises should 
be short. But suppose at any particular institute 
circumstances enable the managers to have with them 
some very eminent worker in the cause who has 
come five hundred or a thousand miles, and who can 
stay only a day or half a day, would it not be absurd 
to chop such a man off at the end of twenty minutes 
because a programme crowded with a large variety 
and assortment of items looks a little better on 
paper? In large cities it is practicable to have a 
number of stars of the first magnitude. But in places 
remote from the great centres such a result is not 
easily attainable. If, in some interior town, in con- 
nection with a good assortment of local talent, it is 
practicable to obtain the services of some such man 



TEACHERS IN COUNCIL. 263 

as Mr. Vincent, Mr. Reynolds, Mr. Wells or Mr. 
Peltz, it would be the extreme of folly not to make 
good use of him while there, even if the programme 
did suffer a little by the operation. The object of 
the institute is to promote the Sunday-school cause, 
not to make or even to carry out a programme. 

In the rebound from the prosy, slip-shod, long- 
winded, humdrum ways of past times, we are in 
danger of going into the opposite extreme and be- 
coming dapper and superficial. While it is import- 
ant to cultivate the grace of brevity and to have 
things move at the tap of the bell, and while per- 
haps the majority of subjects and of speakers may 
appear to best advantage under a limitation of fifteen 
or twenty minutes, yet there are topics and men that 
require and deserve a more deliberate hearing. No 
institute can be considered as of first-class character 
which does not include in its programme at least one 
topic to which justice cannot be done in less than an 
hour, and at least one speaker in regard to whom 
the members would feel it to be a positive loss to let 
him off under an hour. To have all the exercises, or 
many exercises of this length, would, however, be as 
great a fault as to have them of the three-minute or 
pop-gun order. The managers of an institute should 
study variety as well in the length as in the subjects 
of discussion. To have all the exercises short and 
snappy is to turn the' institute into an exhibition 
room. To have them all long is to put the concern 
asleep. The prevalent length' undoubtedly should 



264 TEACHERS IN COUNCIL. 

be about twenty minutes. But there should be a free 
range about this point, from five minutes all the 
way up to sixty. The first thing for the managers 
to do before making up a programme at all is to as- 
certain what materials are at their disposal, who are 
to be had for the occasion, and the peculiarities and 
gifts of each. There will be some five-minute men 
and some forty-minute men, and occasionally a big 
gun who ought to have an hour. Make the pro- 
gramme accordingly. Do not cut all your coats to 
fit either Daniel Lambert or Tom Thumb, but take 
some little measure of your men before you proceed 
with your tailoring. 

A printed programme, to be placed in the hands 
of all the members, is indispensable to the thorough 
success of an institute. This programme should be 
in the form of a small pamphlet rather than a broad 
sheet. One page should contain the names and post- 
office addresses of the managers, conductor and 
teachers. The hymns to be sung should be printed 
as a sort of appendix. This is better than borrow- 
ing a big pile of music books for the occasion. The 
hymns and music should be such as are suitable for 
use in Sunday-school. They may not be perhaps as 
appropriate to adults as others that could be selected. 
But there is usually at an institute some first-rate 
musical talent, and the members, by singing together 
under such direction, get ideas about the manner of 
singing such pieces in their own school, and this is 
as important to them as any of the other exercises. 



TEACHERS IN COUNCIL. 265 

5. Teachers' Weekly Meeting. 

The association of teachers for the purpose of mu- 
tual improvement is an agency for good second to 
none. It is a great mistake when a teacher, or a 
person in any kind of occupation, isolates himself 
from his fellows. If his own methods and plans are 
good, he owes it to the cause to communicate them to 
others. If he gains nothing himself by such inter- 
course, he imparts an important benefit to his fellow- 
laborers. But there is no one, no matter how gifted 
or accomplished, that has not much to learn, and 
that may not learn by the interchange of thought 
with others working in the same field. Nor is it 
only from the great and distinguished that we are to 
learn. The very humblest worker may contribute 
something to the common weal. He who has most 
to learn on his own account may yet have something 
to teach to others. 

A teacher who communes only with his own 
thoughts, who keeps entirely to himself and his own 
class, is neglecting a most important means of 
growth. Improvement in all things comes by com- 
parison. The wide-awake teacher never confers 
with another teacher, or visits another school, with- 
out getting new ideas and having his old ideas 
stirred up. A method that is different from our 
own, even if it is not as good as ours, sets us to 
thinking. It shows us often that we have fallen un- 
consciously into mere routine, and without drawing 
23 



266 TEACHERS IN COUNCIL. 

us into another man's rut, it serves to drag us out of 
our own. If the earnest men and women who are 
carrying forward the Sunday-school movement wish 
to accomplish really great things, they must manage 
to have some stated times for conference and for the 
comparison of thoughts and plans. By these means 
poor teachers may be made good and the good may 
be made better, the weak may become stronger, and 
the strong may be enlarged, and the inventions of 
one become the possession of all. 

I fear that in many schools the teachers have no 
stated meetings for conference and study. I know 
there are practical difficulties in the way of keeping 
up a teachers' meeting. Of the six weekday even- 
ings, one is appropriated to the weekly lecture and 
one to the prayer-meeting, and it is rare in any con- 
gregation that a week passes without at least one 
extra meeting of some kind connected with the cause 
of religion and benevolence. Here are one-half of 
one's evenings already taken up. If the Sunday- 
school is to occupy a fourth evening of every week, 
have teachers ordinarily the leisure for it? 

This question of time is really the gravest obstacle 
in the way of the superintendent who seeks to have 
a stated meeting with his teachers, and I have 
known more than one earnest, resolute man, who 
was full of zeal, and whose heart was much set on 
this very thing, who was yet obliged to abandon the 
project because he feared to multiply meetings in 
the congregation. Sunday-school teachers are ex- 



TEACHERS IN COUNCIL. 267 

pected as a matter of course to be at all the other 
meetings. They are at the lecture, the prayer-meet- 
ing, the missionary, the Dorcas, the ladies' aid and 
other societies. If, in addition to these and to the 
sessions of the school on the Sabbath, and the visita- 
tion of their scholars, one evening in the week is to 
be given to a special, extra service, where is their 
leisure to come from ? What time are they to have 
for social claims and for duty in other directions? 
Will it not deter many from the work of the Sun- 
day-school, if so much is exacted and expected of 
them ? 

I am stating the case strongly perhaps. But the 
best way of surmounting a difficulty is first to look it 
full in the face. We do not escape danger by shut- 
ting our eyes to it. Let us admit then that an undue 
multiplication of religious services is an evil, and 
that the Sunday-school teacher has already a heavy 
burden of duty upon his shoulders. But in under- 
taking this additional service, he is to consider 
whether it will not really lighten instead of increas- 
ing his burden. The help which the teacher gets 
from the weekly meeting with his fellows more than 
compensates for the time it costs. An hour thus 
spent often puts one farther forward in preparation 
for the Sunday work than two or three hours spent 
in solitary study. Moreover, at such a meeting, by 
a free interchange and comparison of thought, we 
often get views and ideas that no amount of solitary 
study would have given us, and we almost always 



268 TEACHERS IN COUNCIL. 

get our hearts warmed and our consciences quick- 
ened by this contact with other live workers. 

But in discussing this question, and every other 
question connected with the subject, let us bear in 
mind that the Sunday-school work is a great work — 
second only to that of the pulpit. The more we fix 
our thoughts on the incalculable good we may ac- 
complish, the less will we think of the difficulties. 
Set before the teacher the brightness of the crown at 
the top of the long ascent, and he will not mind a 
few rubs and scratches by the way. If by spending 
an hour a week in prayer and conference with his 
fellow-teachers he can increase perceptibly the 
chances of his winning the souls of his pupils as 
stars in the crown of his rejoicing, he will rather re- 
joice at the opportunity than regard it as a hardship. 
Love lightens every labor. The way to meet this 
question is first to get our hearts warmed with the 
thought of our Saviour's great love for us and of the 
infinite preciousness of the work of saving souls. 
Certain it is that in many congregations the teachers 
do find a way of meeting statedly for study and con- 
ference, and where they thus meet they show less 
signs of being overburdened than where they have 
no such meeting. There may be cases in which it 
would be advisable for a teacher to absent himself 
from some other weekly service in order to gain the 
time for being at the teachers' meeting. 

I cannot but think that in every congregation in 
which the Sunday-school teachers have no regular 



TEACHERS IN COUNCIL, 269 

stated times of meeting, the pastor and the superin- 
tendent ought to take the matter into serious consid- 
eration, and not to let such a state of things continue 
if by any ordinary exertions, or even by some extra- 
ordinary exertions, it can be prevented. 

The teachers' meeting — by which phrase I mean 
the teachers of one particular school meeting statedly 
by themselves as a class — bears about the same rela- 
tion to one of these big conventions that the base of 
a pyramid bears to the apex. The latter is a more 
conspicuous object, but the former is by all odds the 
most important. It is important indeed that the 
active Sunday-school workers of a whole State, 
county or city should come together in general coun- 
cil once a year to compare notes and to devise plans. 
But it is incomparably more important that the teach- 
ers in each particular school all over the land should 
come together from week to week all through the 
year. Here in the single congregation is the true 
place for the Sunday-school normal institute. In 
those large institutes of which the newspapers have 
given us an account, principles may be discussed and 
methods may be illustrated by lecturers and master 
workmen, ideas may be disseminated and impulses 
given, but the carrying out of the scheme into prac- 
tical results is a work for single congregations. Here 
the members are all acquainted with each other ; 
they have a common interest, and may have a com- 
mon lesson ; the number is not so large but that all 
may take part ; and by continuing to meet weekly, 
23* 



270 TEACHERS IN COUNCIL. 

year after year, there is a reasonable chance that 
they will acquire not merely knowledge and good 
theoretical views, but practical skill. 

Teachers' meetings are no new thing. They date 
back almost as far as the Sunday-school itself. If I 
mistake not, they were more common thirty or forty 
years ago than they are now ; but in the teachers' 
meeting as it existed in a former generation the ex- 
ercises were limited to prayer for the school and 
studying the lesson. In urging the maintenance of 
this meeting upon our teachers now these two ob- 
jects, prayer and study of the lesson, are still to be 
kept in view. But there is now an important addi- 
tion to the exercises imperatively called for. A thor- 
ough knowledge of the lesson is absolutely essential 
to all good teaching, and for obtaining such a know- 
ledge a teachers' meeting is a great help. While 
discussing the various topics of the lesson with our 
fellow-teachers, we gather up hints and ideas that we 
would never get from mere solitary study. But some- 
thing more than this knowledge is needed in order 
to teach. The teachers' meeting must be something 
more than a mere Bible class. It must be a normal 
class, in which the members, besides investigating 
the lesson, may study methods of teaching and gov- 
erning, and may each in turn give a practice lesson 
under the guidance of the pastor or superintendent 
and the kindly criticism of their fellows. 

To see some one else give a practice lesson gives us 
new views. It improves our theoretical knowledge, 



TEACHERS IN COUNCIL. 271 

but it imparts no skill to ourselves. We learn to do 
a thing by doing it. There is no other way. If it 
is not practicable at a teachers' meeting to have a 
class of children present to practice on, let the teach- 
ers practice on each other. This is constantly done 
in normal schools. One of the class takes charge of 
it as teacher, and goes through the lesson to the best 
of his or her ability. Then the regular teacher and 
the members of the class discuss in a friendly spirit 
the manner in which the instruction was given, offer- 
ing suggestions and criticisms. The process is at 
first rather embarrassing, and it requires no little 
gentleness and tact on the part of the conductor. 
But after a while the parties become more at their 
ease and acquire greater freedom of action ; the ex- 
ercise then becomes in the highest degree interesting 
and exciting. A teacher who has once fairly gone 
through the ordeal of teaching a lesson to his fellows 
feels a degree of confidence when coming before his 
own class that nothing else could give, and this con- 
fidence and self-possession is always an element of 
power when in the presence of a class. 

Besides these two things, the study of the lesson 
and practice teaching, the teachers' meeting should 
set apart a regular portion of its time to the consid- 
eration of the numerous questions connected with 
the science of teaching. The literature of this sub- 
ject is ample and is increasing, and Sunday-school 
teachers would do well to acquaint themselves with 
it more than they are in the habit of doing. Besides 



27 2 TEACHERS IN COUNCIL. 

the books which discuss exclusively Sunday-school 
methods, there are excellent treatises on the general 
subject of teaching and school government, and the 
perusal of these could not fail to be of eminent ser- 
vice to the Sunday-school teacher. 

A Sunday-school teacher who will acquaint him- 
self with any considerable number of these works 
can hardly fail to derive benefit from them for the 
discharge of his own special duties. These works 
abound with suggestions which apply to Sunday- 
school teaching as much as to any other teaching. 

But to return to our subject, the teachers' meeting. 
I hold that this is the true starting-point for all gen- 
eral and permanent improvement in our Sunday- 
schools. The teachers of every school ought to meet 
weekly by themselves as a normal class. The exer- 
cises of this class ought to be : i. The thorough 
study of the lesson ; 2. Practice teaching, in which 
there should be no mere spectators, but all in turn 
and equally should be actors ; and, 3. A discussion 
of some of the general principles of teaching and 
school government. 






CHAPTER VI. 
777.E SUNDAY-SCHOOL LIBRARY. 




PART I. 

HOW TO SELECT A LIBRARY. 

j]HE subject of Sunday-school books and 
papers has assumed such proportions that 
the friends of Sunday-schools can no longer 
ignore it, if they would. The time was, and that 
within the memory of some still living, when Jud- 
son's Questions, Anna Ross, Little Henry and his 
Bearer, and some half-a-dozen other books, which 
could be counted on your fingers, constituted the en- 
tire encyclopaedia of Sunday-school literature. Now 
the number of books clamoring for admission at the 
doors of the Sunday-school library is absolutely ap- 
palling. The number of publishing houses actively 
engaged in the production of this class of books, 
including the great religious publication societies, is 
not less than thirty-six, wielding a capital of at 
least five millions of dollars.. The books already 
produced are numbered by thousands (seven thou- 

S 273 



274 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL LIBRARY. 

sand is probably a moderate estimate), and they are 
increasing at a rate that is really frightful. The 
number of new Sunday-school library books has for 
several years exceeded the rate of one a day, and it 
is all the while increasing. It was four hundred and 
thirty-four in 1868, and probably reached five hun- 
dred in 1869. Question-books, Record-books, Pic- 
ture-cards, Maps, Reference-books, and Periodicals, 
weekly and monthly, have increased in a like pro- 
portion. 

The church committee, therefore, the pastor, the 
superintendent, the librarian, or whoever it is that 
is entrusted with the duty of furnishing the Sunday- 
school with books and other supplies, is compelled 
to pause. He must perforce give the matter some 
thought, and determine, if possible, upon some prin- 
ciple of selection. No haphazard purchases will be 
satisfactory where there is such a vast variety from 
which to choose, and where there is of necessity so 
much that is mere trash, if not worse. Not only 
should the superintendent, or the committee-man, 
pause, but the Christian community should pause. 
Here is a practical question which we can neither 
ignore nor evade, and it has already assumed such 
proportions that we must either master it or be mas- 
tered by it. The reading which the Sunday-school 
library supplies forms no inconsiderable part both 
of the religious and the literary food of the com- 
munity. Every child that attends the Sunday- 
school expects, as a matter of course, to take home 



THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL LIBRARY. 275 

a library-book every Sunday, and this book is read 
not only by the child that takes it home, but by other 
members of the family. It is speaking within bounds 
to say that not less than three millions of these 
bright little volumes are carried home weekly, and 
each of them is read by not less than three persons 
on the average. The influence of such a fact, like 
that of the dew and the light and some of the other 
noiseless agencies of nature, is beyond the power 
of computation or of statement. We have evoked 
a power that will not be laid at our bidding. The 
appetite for reading, like that for food or for drink, 
when once aroused, will take no denial, and in the 
case of the young it devours without discrimination 
whatever is set before it. Food or poison, so it sat- 
isfies hunger, it is eagerly swallowed. 

What shall we do ? 

First, we are not to raise a howl of lamentation 
about it. As well might a farmer go about groan- 
ing and grumbling because his acres yield such a 
prodigious growth of weeds. The very rankness 
of this growth only shows how fat is his soil, how 
genial have been his skies. The very luxuriance of 
this juvenile literature, while it necessitates increased 
labor and care, is yet one of the hopeful signs of the 
times. Only we must do as does the thrifty farmer 
— we must spare no pains in the work of weeding. 
If our children refused to read at all, or if there 
were no books of any kind to tempt them, or if all 
that the soil of literature produced were weeds, we 



276 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL LIBRARY. 

might well groan and howl. But in the present 
case indiscriminate croaking is as unreasonable as 
it is useless. In the face of such a state of things 
as we have described, mere grumbling has about as 
much effect as grumbling at the weather has ; it does 
not make the number of books produced or the 
number read one volume less ; and, like finding 
fault with the weather, it ignores the countless 
blessings produced by those very clouds and show- 
ers and dew and frost which we are so constantly 
berating. 

What then shall we do? 

I answer : The subject of juvenile religious litera- 
ture must occupy more of the serious and deliberate 
attention of the Christian community than it has 
hitherto done. It is not a subject to be estimated 
by the puny size of the volumes concerned, nor is it 
one to be left to the judgment of the youngest and 
least experienced in the congregation — the giggling, 
sentimental misses, who, not old enough to take 
charge of a class, are sometimes thought quite com- 
petent to have charge of the library, and who often 
really have more to say as to the choice of the books 
than have the minister, the superintendent and the 
librarian. Verily, such things ought not to be. 
Next to the choice of a superintendent* there is 
no graver subject of consideration for a Sunday- 
school than the selection of its library books. It 
is entitled to the best judgment of the soundest 
heads that the congregation or the church contains. 



THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL LIBRARY. 277 

It should be made a prominent subject for examina- 
tion and debate at every convention of Sunday- 
school teachers. It should be made a part of the 
standing order of business for every ecclesiastical 
synod or assembly. The three millions of Sunday- 
school books devoured every week in the chimney- 
corner and the nursery are of quite as much conse- 
quence to the health of the church as are the few 
hundreds or thousands of ponderous octavos and 
quartos which in the course of the year find their 
way to the shelves of the theologians. 

But, once more, says the reader, what is to be 
done? What is your plan of operations? How are 
we to get at it, as a practical question ? Suppose 
the case of a new school about to be organized, or 
of an old school about to renew its library, how 
shall they go to work to root out the weeds, or to 
select the pure wheat out of the vast mass that lies 
before them ? 

These are reasonable questions. I shall endeavor 
to give them an explicit answer. 

How shall we select our Sunday-school books? 

I take it for granted that there must be a selection. 
The number of books offering is so great that no 
Sunday-school can take them all, and if it could, it 
would be very unwise to do so, for out of this vast 
number of competing books very many are such as 
ought never to see the inside of a Sunday-school 
library. A school, therefore, which undertakes to 
24 



278 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL LIBRARY, 

replenish its library, must make up its mind that 
something is to be done besides collecting money. 
Some thought and labor must be bestowed upon it. 

This, then, is the first thing for the minister and 
the superintendent to do when a new library is to be 
bought. Let them make a stir about it, and keep 
on stirring, until a right feeling of the importance 
of the subject is awakened in the congregation. Un- 
less the people first feel that it is really of some im- 
portance, and of very grave importance, to know 
what books their children shall receive from the 
Sunday-school library, there will be difficulty in get- 
ting the necessary help. These books preach to the 
children, silently, perhaps, but not the less effect- 
ively, and it behooves a people to know that this 
preaching is of the right sort, quite as much as that 
which is addressed to them from the pulpit. 

Let the minister, the superintendent, or whoever 
is to engineer the matter, take his stand here, and 
say, No book shall come into the library until it has 
been read and approved by some one in whose 
judgment on such matters the people have confi- 
dence. Nothing like standing still to wake people 
up. When a locomotive meets an obstruction, and 
the train comes to a sudden halt, everybody is wide 
awake in an instant. If the superintendent finds the 
people in a sound sleep on this subject of the library 
books, let him close the library ; close the school if 
necessary ; bring matters up with a round turn ; do 
something to w r ake the people out of their sleep. 



THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL LIBRARY. 279 

But suppose everybody wide awake, what next? 
Let it be understood that work is required, and this 
work is not of that kind which is to be done with a 
hurrah and a flourish and under social excitement, 
like that of getting up an anniversary, a pic-nic, or 
an excursion, but is something to be done with slow, 
patient, solitary labor — something that will take 
time, and that involves no little of irksome drudgery. 

There is needed, in short, 

A Reading Committee. 

The duty of the Reading Committee should be 
to read and approve every book that comes into the 
library ; and if two or three hundred new volumes 
are needed — which is no uncommon demand — it 
will be seen that the position of the committee is no 
sinecure. Yet is not this what is required and ex- 
pected of those who are the guardians of our public 
schools? Do not the books in use in those schools 
have to pass a rigid scrutiny, each book in detail, 
on its own individual merits? And do we not hold 
to a strict accountability our school directors and 
trustees for the manner in which they discharge this 
trust? And are the books which are to be used in 
our Sunday-schools of less importance than those 
which are used in our week-day schools? Surely 
there are in every congregation men and women 
enough, and of the right kind, too, if the proper 
means are taken for bringing this subject before 
them, to undertake and carry through this work of 



280 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL LIBRAE 2. 

examining and passing judgment upon the books 
which are to go into the Sunday-school library, and 
which are to mould, to so large an extent, the re- 
ligious views of the youth of the congregation. 

The Selection of the Committee. 

Who are to select this committee, and of what 
kind of persons should it consist? 

As to the power of selection or appointment, that 
will of course depend upon the usages in each con- 
gregation. Whoever in the congregation has by 
law or usage the control of the Sunday-school, has 
the control of this matter also. Churches vary 
much in their views in regard to the control of the 
Sunday-school. In many cases this institution is 
altogether at loose ends, being considered as a sort 
of independent, irresponsible concern, and left to 
manage itself in whatever way it pleases. I have 
no sympathy with any such views. I am most 
decidedly of the opinion that the pastor, the session, 
the vestry, whatever man or men constitute the gov- 
erning power of the church in its spiritual concerns, 
should be the ultimate, controlling power of the 
Sunday-school. The simplest and the safest organ- 
ization for a Sunday-school is that in which the 
superintendent holds his appointment directly from 
the church authorities, and in- his management of 
the school is considered as representing the church 
authorities — acting for them and carrying out their 
views. That same authority, then, is the one to call 



TtiE SUNDAY-SCHOOL LIBRARY. 28.1 

into existence the Reading Committee of which we 
are now in search. Practically, in most cases, the 
selection of the committee will rest with the min- 
ister and the superintendent, and these two officers 
will also have to do work as members of the com- 
mittee. Often, indeed, the whole work is thrown 
upon these two officers, sometimes upon one of 
them. But such a plan is eminently unwise, and 
can rarely be necessary. No one man can find the 
time to do the whole work, and do it well and with 
the proper promptness, and that congregation must 
be exceptional indeed in which there are not some 
members competent to act upon such a committee 
besides the minister and the superintendent. It is a 
case in which, of all others, division of labor is 
desirable. 

Having determined in some way, by whom this 
important committee is to be appointed — whether 
by a vote of the teachers, by the superintendent, by 
the minister, or by the church session, the next 
question, and one coming even more directly home 
to the very heart of the business, is, What sort of 
persons are needed for this committee? What are 
the qualifications desirable in those to whose judg- 
ment we shall leave the selection of our library 
books, and what rules should govern them in mak- 
ing the selection ? 

Without some clear and well-defined views on 
this point, we shall be in danger of making a 
most serious mistake. 
24* 



282 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL LIBRARY. 

To this point, then, I shall next direct the atten- 
tion of my readers. 

What Sort of Persons should be on the Reading 
Committee? 

Not every one is fitted to choose books for the 
Sunday-school library. Something more is needed 
than piety, good intentions, and willingness to do 
the work. 

1. In the first place, the person appointed for this 
purpose ought to be one who has some education 
and literary culture. Of course, a book is not to 
be selected merely because of its style as a literary 
performance. But unfortunately, some of the books 
now written for children have literary blemishes 
which ought to exclude them from every Sunday- 
school library. So long as we have such an abun- 
dance of what is unexceptionable in every respect, 
there is no excuse for putting into the hands of our 
children what is not good English — slang, bad 
grammar, bad rhetoric, tinsel, sickly sentimental- 
ism, or windy hifalutin. The persons entrusted 
with the selection of the library ought to have suf- 
ficient literary taste and judgment to be able to ex- 
clude all such wretched stuff, and I assure my read- 
ers there is no little of it in the market. 

2. In the second place, the committee ought to be 
well acquainted with Christian doctrine, and es- 
pecially with the doctrines peculiar to their own 
church. Of course, it is not to be required of 



THB S UN DA T- S CHO OL LIBRAR r. 283 

every book that goes into the library that it teaches 
the distinct peculiarities of the church to which the 
school belongs, or that it teaches all the distinguish- 
ing doctrines of Christianity. What is required 
just here is a negative safeguard. We want some 
one competent to see that, under the guise of a 
pleasant sentimental story, impressions or thoughts 
are not conveyed prejudicial to the truth as em- 
braced by Christians generally, or to the truth as 
held by that particular church. Some of our most 
popular works of fiction are in this way quietly sap- 
ping the foundations of religious truth. The evil 
is not absent entirely from the religious story-books 
written for children, and those appointed to examine 
these books with a view to selection should be clear- 
headed in doctrinal matters, able to detect all false 
teaching, no matter how much it may be sugar- 
coated. 

3. In the third place, the committee ought to con- 
sist of those who have some sympathy with the 
wants and the tastes of children. It is of no avail 
that a book is in faultless English, and that its or- 
thodoxy is above suspicion, if the book itself is dull, 
heavy, uninteresting, abstruse, or above the chil- 
dren's heads. Doubtless such a book will do no 
harm, but it will also do no good. Such books are 
perhaps a convenience to the librarian. They are 
always in their places on the shelf, they never are 
lost, they never want rebinding. I have seen scores 
and hundreds of such volumes holding their places 



284 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL LIBRAE T. 

in the library, undisturbed year in and year out, and 
just as good and fresh in paper and binding at the 
end of eight or ten years as when first placed upon 
the shelf. The books may perhaps be very good in 
themselves, such as would interest and profit a dif- 
ferent class of readers, but they do not interest chil- 
dren. The young cannot be made to read them, 
except only as they may be made to take rhubarb, 
or to do anything else that is disagreeable. No one, 
therefore, is suited to serve on the book committee 
who has not some practical acquaintance with the 
wants and the tastes of the young. No one, also, 
should be selected for such a service who has the 
impracticable notion that any book is fit for the li- 
brary if only it is a good book. Edwards on the 
Affections is a good book, but it is not good for the 
Sunday-school library, though it is sometimes placed 
there. 

What Sort of Books should be Selected? 

First, negatively. No book should be admitted 
to the library which is in bad English, none which 
is unsound in doctrine, none which from want of 
attraction will not be read by the scholars. 

Thus far the way is clear. But let us now ad- 
vance one step farther. Not every book which 
is attractive to the scholars is necessarily a fit 
book for the library. A volume may be one of 
absorbing interest, one that the scholars will de- 
vour with greediness, and yet it may be no more 



THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL LIBRARY, 285 

fit for the Sunday-school library than Uncle Tom's 
Cabin or Old Mortality. The mere fact that 
a book is intensely interesting, and that it is especi- 
ally interesting to the young, is no proof of its fit- 
ness for the library. A book may be too interesting. 
The story may be of such an exciting and absorb- 
ing character as to create a false and depraved taste, 
and so to unfit the youthful mind for reading of a 
sober and healthful character. 

The positive requirements of a Sunday-school 
book are few and plain : 1. It should be sufficiently 
interesting to secure a perusal from ordinary youth. 
2. The interest should turn, not upon love and mat- 
rimony, or anything of that sort, but upon points of 
duty and doctrine. 3. It should teach religion. 4. 
The religion which it teaches should not be of the 
sentimental kind, like that of Dickens's Little 
Nell, which quietly ignores all that is peculiar to 
Christianity, and sends people straight to heaven 
if only the circumstances of their death happen to 
be pathetic. The religion inculcated in the Sunday- 
school library-book should be something distinctly 
taught in the Holy Scriptures, and connected with 
the way of salvation through Jesus Christ. A book 
is not religious merely because it touches the feel- 
ings and opens the fountain of tears. Let the in- 
exorable demand of all these authors who are flood- 
ing the land with story-books for children be that 
no story, how pathetic or thrilling soever, shall be 
deemed fit for the Sunday-school, unless its manifest 



286 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL LIBRARY. 

aim is to set forth attractively the peculiar doctrines 
of the gospel — faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, re- 
pentance for sin, and a holy life, as that life is de- 
scribed in God's Word. The conversion, the repent- 
ance, the religious experience, the good deeds which 
are wrought up into the story? and constitute its sub- 
stance, should be such as will bear the test of 
Scripture. 

It is, I think, a serious mistake in these religious 
story-books, to describe the good children as all dy- 
ing young. It begets in the minds of the youthful 
readers the idea that religion is a mere matter of 
deathbeds, and that if a youth becomes a Christian 
he will, as a matter of course, die early. Another 
mistake is to imagine that a story to be interesting 
should contain the whole life of any one. In both 
of these respects there has been of late years a great 
improvement. Some of the very best books now 
offering contain only a single episode or transaction 
in the life of the boy or girl described — the narrative 
of a single summer, or of a trip to the seaside, or 
something of that sort, the object being to bring out 
in narrative form some particular type of Christian 
character or duty. I cannot speak too highly of 
such a method. 

How to Select a Library. 

We will suppose a committee appointed for the 
purpose of choosing books for the Sunday-school 
library. We will suppose the committee to consist 



THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL LIBRARY. 287 

of persons competent and willing to undertake the 
work — persons of some education and literary cul- 
ture, well informed in matters of doctrine, in hearty 
sympathy with the wants and tastes of youth, and 
having the necessary leisure. Suppose such a com- 
mittee organized and ready to go to work. What is 
the first thing they should do ? 

It is obvious that the committee should know first 
of all how much money they have to spend. Next, 
they should take some precaution not to duplicate 
books which the scholars have had already. Thirdly, 
they should consider the proportion needed of each 
particular class of books. Some of the books offer- 
ing are written for and suited to very young chil- 
dren, who are just beginning to read. Others are 
suited only to adults and those in Bible classes. 
Others are suited chiefly to youth of ten or twelve 
years of age. Then, again, some books are large, 
costing from a dollar to a dollar and a half or more. 
Others are small, costing perhaps only fifty to sixty 
cents or less. Scholars always choose large books. 
A big book pleases the child's vanity, and besides 
it gives him more reading. But it is not always 
practicable to indulge the scholars in this whim. If 
two hundred volumes are needed to go round the 
school, and there are but one hundred or one hun- 
dred and twenty dollars to spend, the purchase must 
include some small volumes. The committee, there- 
fore, should look over the school and make an ap- 
proximate estimate of the proportion of books 



288 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL LIBRARY. 

needed of the different sizes and for the different 
ages. 

Having gone through this preliminary work, the 
committee should next agree among themselves 
upon some principles of rejection and selection. It 
would be well, I think, and save time as well as 
trouble, to reduce to writing the rules which are to 
govern the members of the committee in making 
their decision, and each member should have a copy- 
before him while reading. Of course, it is not 
necessary that these rules should be very elaborate. 
Something very simple and concise, like those which 
follow, might answer the purpose. It is agreed, for 
instance, to buy — 

i. No book that is carelessly written. 

2. No book that is weak and trashy in substance. 

3. No book that contains erroneous doctrines. 

4. No book that recommends or countenances 
what is of doubtful propriety. 

5. No book that is dull and prosy. 

6. No book that is above the comprehension of 
the scholars. 

7. No book that requires coaxing to induce the 
scholars to read it. 

8. No book the interest of which depends in any 
considerable degree on love and matrimony. 

9. No book that is not distinctly religious. 

10. No book whose religious teachings are not 
scriptural. 

I give these, not as exhausting the subject, but as 



THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL LIBRARY 289 

specimens to show the way of getting at something 
tangible. 

But suppose the committee organized, and the 
rules for the selection of the books adopted, what is 
the next step? Shall we go indiscriminately into a 
market containing seven thousand different books, 
and try them all ? 

Fortunately, such an impracticable plan is not 
necessary. The main part of this most difficult 
work is done to our hands. There are men engaged 
exclusively in this business, dealers in Sabbath- 
school books, having, it is true, a pecuniary interest 
in the matter, but yet conscientious, upright, God- 
fearing men, who are, furthermore, pledged to an 
honest endeavor in this matter by the fact that the 
success of their business as dealers depends upon 
their selling only books of the very best and most 
unexceptionable character — men who make the se- 
lection and sale of Sunday-school books their main 
if not their sole business, and who pledge themselves 
before the public that they will keep no book upon 
their shelves but such as they have examined, and 
are prepared from personal knowledge to recom- 
mend. The existence of such a class of dealers, 
while it shows the magnitude and complexity of the 
Sunday-school interest, offers also a practical con- 
venience of incalculable value to purchasing com- 
mittees. 

Such a committee, having made all their prelimi- 
nary arrangements, may be imagined to proceed as fol- 
25 T 



288 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL LIBRARY. 

needed of the different sizes and for the different 
ages. 

Having gone through this preliminary work, the 
committee should next agree among themselves 
upon some principles of rejection and selection. It 
would be well, I think, and save time as well as 
trouble, to reduce to writing the rules which are to 
govern the members of the committee in making 
their decision, and each member should have a copy- 
before him while reading. Of course, it is not 
necessary that these rules should be very elaborate. 
Something very simple and concise, like those which 
follow, might answer the purpose. It is agreed, for 
instance, to buy — 

i. No book that is carelessly written. 

2. No book that is weak and trashy in substance. 

3. No book that contains erroneous doctrines. 

4. No book that recommends or countenances 
what is of doubtful propriety. 

5. No book that is dull and prosy. 

6. No book that is above the comprehension of 
the scholars. 

7. No book that requires coaxing to induce the 
scholars to read it. 

8. No book the interest of which depends in any 
considerable degree on love and matrimony. 

9. No book that is not distinctly religious. 

10. No book whose religious teachings are not 
scriptural. 

I give these, not as exhausting the subject, but as 



THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL LIBRARY 289 

specimens to show the way of getting at something 
tangible. 

But suppose the committee organized, and the 
rules for the selection of the books adopted, what is 
the next step ? Shall we go indiscriminately into a 
market containing seven thousand different books, 
and try them all ? 

Fortunately, such an impracticable plan is not 
necessary. The main part of this most difficult 
work is done to our hands. There are men engaged 
exclusively in this business, dealers in Sabbath- 
school books, having, it is true, a pecuniary interest 
in the matter, but yet conscientious, upright, God- 
fearing men, who are, furthermore, pledged to an 
honest endeavor in this matter by the fact that the 
success of their business as dealers depends upon 
their selling only books of the very best and most 
unexceptionable character — men who make the se- 
lection and sale of Sunday-school books their main 
if not their sole business, and who pledge themselves 
before the public that they will keep no book upon 
their shelves but such as they have examined, and 
are prepared from personal knowledge to recom- 
mend. The existence of such a class of dealers, 
while it shows the magnitude and complexity of the 
Sunday-school interest, offers also a practical con- 
venience of incalculable value to purchasing com- 
mittees. 

Such a committee, having made all their prelimi- 
nary arrangements, may be imagined to proceed as fol- 
25 T 



29O THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL LIBRARY. 

lows. Having found a dealer of this kind, in whose 
integrity, judgment, and experience in the business 
they have some confidence, they send to him a con- 
ditional order for the number and amount of books 
wanted, the condition being that any books may be 
returned which, on examination, are not approved by 
the committee. 

The committee, in sending such an order, should 
send with it a catalogue of the existing library, so 
as to avoid duplicating, and should describe in gen- 
eral terms about how many volumes are desired for 
the money, the proportion of large and small vol- 
umes, of books for adults and for juveniles, and so 
forth. There are dealers, well known, responsible 
men, who, on receiving such an order, would be 
willing to bestow the labor necessary for making up 
a suitable assortment, and who, for the sake of the 
custom, would accept the condition of taking back 
such of the books sent as did not suit. Such an ar- 
rangement as this would save the purchasing com- 
mittee a vast amount of labor, and yet leave them 
perfectly independent in their choice. 

Two or three additional suggestions are needed to 
close up this whole subject. First, it is much more 
important to a school to get books of the best cha- 
racter than to get them at a discount from the pub- 
lishers' catalogue prices. A dealer who bestows 
much time and expense in examining and certifying 
each particular book that he puts into an invoice 
cannot afford at the same time to sell largely under 



THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL LIBRARY. 291 

the publishers' catalogue prices because the order hap- 
pens to be of considerable size. Secondly, I would not 
as a rule, recommend to any school the books that 
come put up in paper boxes or made-up libraries. 
I have had some experience in this sort of thing, 
and found, to my cost, that generally, in such collec- 
tions, a few good books are used to make sale for a 
large percentage of trash. Let each particular 
book that comes into the library be chosen by itself, 
on its own individual merits, even if it does cost a 
little more both of time and money to make up the 
collection. One hundred volumes, every one of 
which is a live book, are worth more to any school 
than one hundred and twenty volumes, forty or fifty 
of which are just so much dead lumber on the 
shelves. 



PART II. 

HOW TO MANAGE THE LIBRARY. 

The proper management of the library is one of 
those practical questions which every superintend- 
ent has to meet. The methods adopted are as nu- 
merous almost as the schools, and there is no 
method that I ever heard of that does not involve 
some practical inconveniences. I find inconveni- 
ences and difficulties in that which I myself recom- 



292 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL LIBRARY. 

mend. Yet on the whole it seems to be the one in- 
volving the least trouble and securing the greatest 
practical efficiency. I propose to set forth briefly 
what some of the difficulties are and the ordinary 
methods of meeting them, and then to explain the 
plan which, after much experience and thought, has 
secured a more general verdict of approval than any 
other. 

Difficulties in the Ordinary Methods. 

1. Books Disappear. I do not mean to say that 
they are stolen, but through some leak in the mode 
of registration and distribution the librarian loses 
track of them, and they are gone past recovery. 
Replenishing a library is in too many cases like 
pouring water into a sieve. I think I do not over- 
state the fact when I say that on the average one-half 
the books which are furnished to Sunday-school 
libraries are lost. Some books will be lost under 
the most careful management. But, other things be- 
ing equal, that system is best which with the least 
labor and friction secures the most' complete respon- 
sibility for the books given out and is best adapted 
to ensure their safe return. 

Some librarians charge the books to the teacher, 
and look to the teacher for their return. It is well, 
certainly, for the teacher to have some responsibility 
for the books given out to his class, as he comes 
more directly than any one else into communication 
with his scholars, and he has more than any one else 



THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL LIBRARY. 293 

the means of getting the books promptly returned. 
But teachers change from time to time, and when 
they do not change they are often absent. There is 
hardly a session in a school of any size at which 
some of the regular teachers are not absent. The 
temporary supply of course knows nothing about the 
books that were given out on the Sunday before. A 
teacher who is going to be absent, or who leaves a 
class entirely, ought, of course, to communicate with 
his successor or his temporary supply, and with the 
superintendent, and to place in their hands his roll- 
book and other memoranda pertaining to the class. 
But teachers are oblivious of this duty, as of many 
others, and we have to take things as we find them, 
not as they ought to be. 

The librarian, who has no record of the books given 
out except the name of the teacher through whose 
hands they have gone, will find himself sadly strait- 
ened in the means of tracing and recovering lost vol- 
umes. If this ruinous disappearance of books is to 
be stopped, each volume given out must be charged 
directly to the scholar who takes it, and there must 
be some means both of doing this without much labor 
and also of knowing at a glance, when a scholar ap- 
plies for a book, whether there is one already charged 
against him. If in addition to this record against 
the scholar there is one against the teacher also, so 
much the better. 

2. The Selection of Books. How, when and 
where shall the scholars make their selection of the 
25* 



294 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL LIBRARY. 

books which they wish to take each week from the 
library ? 

In some schools assistant librarians go round from 
class to class with a basket or tray full of books, and 
the scholars overhaul the load and pick out from in- 
spection what they want, if perchance there happen 
to be in the lot any that they care about at all. The 
interruption and confusion which this occasions, be- 
sides its unsatisfactory results in other respects, make 
it unnecessary to dwell upon it. 

A worse plan still is for the teachers to go to the 
library and select for their class from the shelves. 
While the teacher is at the library selecting books 
his class is running riot. Besides this, people the 
world over are careless about such matters, and Sun- 
day-school teachers are no exception to the rule. 
Where this plan is adopted, the librarian will be for- 
tunate indeed who has reported to him for record 
one-half the books taken out. The plan is as un- 
businesslike as it would be for a grocer to allow his 
customers to weigh out and charge their own tea 
and sugar, or for a bank to allow its depositors to 
put their hands into the till and count out the change 
called for by the checks presented instead of receiv- 
ing it from the hands of the teller. No one but the 
librarian should in any case take a book from the 
library. This should be the inexorable rule ; any 
other rule ensures loss. The loss does not imply 
dishonesty. It is merely the inevitable result of do- 
ing business in an unbusiness-like way. 



THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL LI BR ART, 295 

Another plan having many features to commend it 
is to have the library operations conducted at some 
different time from the session of the school — say on 
some day in the week or before church on Sunday, 
on that part of the day when the school is not in ses- 
sion. Some schools which meet in the afternoon have 
their library open on Sunday morning for an hour be- 
fore church-time, and the scholars come in by groups 
as it suits their convenience, and going to the shelves, 
select a book and have it charged to them. 

This plan avoids disturbing the school with the 
giving in and taking out of books ; but the scholars 
thus collected about the school-room and the vesti- 
bule of the church for half an hour or an hour before 
service are apt to become noisy, and, moreover, the 
books received just before going into church are apt 
to be read in church instead of the children attending 
to the service. Besides this, if there is a proper lack 
of responsibility in the teachers' going to the shelves 
to make the selection, the risk is much greater in 
allowing the same privilege to the whole mass of the 
scholars. I do not deny that there is some advan- 
tage, in making a selection from a library, to be able 
to go to the shelves and look over the volumes for 
one's self; but the evils attending this mode of selec- 
tion, whether made by teachers or scholars, are so 
many and great that I am. persuaded the plan ought 
never to be adopted;, Some method of selecting 
books must be invented besides that of actual inspec- 
tion of them on the shelves. 



296 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL LIBRARY 

I do not deny, also, that there are advantages in 
having the library opened at some different time 
from the ordinary session of the school, but the dis- 
advantages on the other side greatly preponderate. 
Among these, one that ought never to be forgotten 
is that in our schools are many children, and those 
the very ones that we desire most to benefit, who 
could not come for books at any other time than 
during the regular sessions — children of the poor, 
children at service, mission children. If the library 
is to be of the greatest practical efficiency and value, 
its operations must be carried on during the time of 
the regular session of the school. 

3. The Interruptio7t of the Lesson. Teachers are 
so much annoyed by the continual interruptions 
from this source that they are disposed at times to 
vote the whole thing a nuisance. After the neces- 
sary deductions for the general exercises of the 
school, the time remaining to the teacher for direct 
instruction of his class is small at the best, and it 
should be kept absolutely sacred from intrusion. 
Neither secretary, nor librarian, nor superintendent, 
nor pastor, nor visitor, should encroach for a mo- 
ment, unless on some special and most urgent occa- 
sion. If the teacher is to accomplish anything 
worthy of the name, he needs every moment of that 
precious time, and he needs it without distraction. 

How is it practically in most schools? The 
teacher begins the lesson, and has just succeeded in 
getting the attention of the class fixed on some inter- 



THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL LIBRARY, 297 

esting point, when round comes one of the librarians 
to collect the books. Interruption number one. 
His own thoughts and those of the scholars are 
diverted. The librarian has to make some examina- 
tion of the books returned, and see that they corre- 
spond to the registered account ; he has to inquire of 
one and another for books not returned, perhaps to 
have a little chat with the teacher about the books 
or something else. Altogether, this preliminary 
visit rarely costs less than five minutes, besides the 
diversion of thought which it occasions. 

Then comes — interruption number two — the choice 
of books. Whether this choice is made after the 
librarian's visit or before, the time for it comes out of 
that appropriated to the teacher. It cannot be done 
during the singing, or the prayer, or any of the general 
exercises of the school. It must be done, if done in 
school, in the teacher's time, and it takes a good 
deal of time. The scholars have to talk over among 
themselves the character of the different books, and 
to explore the pages of the catalogue, and then they 
hesitate, and weigh and balance the fancied merits 
and demerits of particular books, and then they 
come to a stand-still, unable to decide, until the 
teacher finally goads them to a conclusion, and with 
minds thoroughly distracted, they once more resume 
the lesson. 

Interruption number three is caused by the de- 
livery of the books. Sometimes the teacher requires 
the books to be placed in a pile at his seat, and does 



298 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL LIBRARY, 

not distribute them to the scholars until the close of 
the lesson. But many a furtive glance at the coveted 
pile shows that its presence is a disturbing element. 
The evil is greatly aggravated when, as is the usual 
custom, the books are actually delivered to the 
scholars by the librarian. Every one is eager to see 
if the book brought him is the one he ordered, or if 
it is such as he expected it to be, and he can hardly 
help peeping into it to look at the pictures, or per- 
haps to see how the story begins, and he must needs 
whisper to his neighbor something about its contents, 
or he blurts out to his teacher that it is not the kind 
of book he wanted. Altogether, in many and many 
a class, the scene after the delivery of the library 
books is a Babel in miniature. Teachers and 
scholars equally are disturbed, excited, not unfre- 
quently vexed. 

What between the coming and going of the li- 
brarians, the collection and the distribution of the 
books, the worry of making the selection, and 
the expressions of satisfaction and of dissatisfaction 
at the result, I deem it no exaggeration to say that 
in a majority of Sunday-school classes, as matters 
are now managed, at least one-half the teaching- 
time is consumed by the operations of the library. 
Such a state of things surely calls for some remedy. 

The Pla?t Proposed. 

Having thus shown the practical difficulties attend- 
ing the subject, and the objections to most of the 



THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL LIBRARY. 299 

methods of management in actual use, I shall now 
explain with some particularity the plan which on 
the whole seems to have the fewest defects and to 
secure the greatest number of advantages : 

1. A Printed Catalogue. A printed catalogue 
of the books is indispensable, and a copy of it should 
be in the hands of every member of the school, 
whether scholar or teacher. Our plan contemplates 
that the selection should be made from the catalogue 
alone, and without an inspection of the books. It is 
important, therefore, that the catalogue should be so 
made as to give as much information as possible 
concerning the character of the several volumes. 

It was at one time proposed to append to the title 
of each volume in the catalogue a brief description 
of the book. But a descriptive catalogue like this 
was found to require a large amount of skill and 
judgment in the preparation, and furthermore to be 
very expensive. Instead of a descriptive catalogue, 
therefore, I recommend a classified one. The books 
may be assorted into three general kinds, corre- 
sponding to three general kinds of pupils in every 
school. These we may for convenience designate 
as the Primary classes, the Main school and the 
Adult classes. Some of the books are suited to 
scholars just beginning to read. Other books are 
suited to those of mature minds — to the teachers and 
the members of the adult classes. Others again are 
such as form the main staple. of our Sunday-school 
books, and are suited to the main body of the school. 



300 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL LIBRARY 

If the catalogue contains the titles of the books all 
alphabetically arranged, and if after each title are 
appended the letters Pr., M. or Ad., to signify that 
the book is suited to one in the Primary, in the Main 
school or in the Adult classes, and if besides this the 
number of pages is given, the scholar has some con- 
siderable clue to guide him in the selection of the 
books. 

Sometimes the catalogue is printed in three parts, 
with three separate headings. But this creates a 
difficulty. Whenever additions are made to the 
library, an entirely new catalogue would have to be 
issued. But under the plan which I propose all 
that is necessary, when new books are bought, is to 
issue supplementary slips. 

Some check is needed to prevent the scholars 
from losing or destroying their catalogues. The 
best plan is to fix a small price upon the catalogue, 
and require the scholar who loses his copy to pay 
for the extra one. 

The cost of printing a catalogue such as I have 
described will depend upon the size of the library 
and the style of the catalogue. 

2. The Scholar's Library Card. Every scholar 
should be furnished with a library card, in which to 
enter the numbers of the books selected. Cards of 
various patterns have been designed for this purpose. 
The form most convenient is given on the next page. 

This contains nine blanks, giving the opportunity 
for nine selections. The scholar may, if he chooses, 



THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL LIBRARY, 301 

fill up the whole number at once. If, when the 
card goes in to the librarian, the book first selected 



r^ 


LIBRARY CARD.^ 























is out, the librarian will supply the applicant with 
some one of the others ; and when all the numbers 
have been exhausted, a new card will be issued. 
These cards may be obtained at the very moderate 
price of fifty cents a hundred. 

There is another form of card of larger size con- 
taining blanks enough to run through a whole year. 
The cost of this is $1.50 a hundred. The back of the 
card contains the necessary directions to the scholar, 
as: (1.) Write in the spaces on the other side of 
the card the numbers of the books which you wish 
to get ; those numbers which you place first will be 
considered your first choice. (2.) Leave this card 
with the librarian as you enter the school-room ; do 
not put it inside your library book. (3.) You can- 
not get another book while you have one out of the 
library, etc. 

3. Register Number. Every member of the 
26 



302 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL LIBRARY. 

school, whether scholar or teacher, should have a 
register number, by which he should be known on 
the books of the superintendent, the secretary and 
the librarian. Number 17 in the style of card given 
shows at once to what scholar or teacher it belongs. 
Only one person in the school has that number. 
An admirable and most complete form for a general 
register has been prepared, providing for all possi- 
ble emergencies and guarding most effectually 
against mistakes, and is at the same time exceed- 
ingly simple and easily worked. 

4. Selection at Home. The scholar is expected 
to keep his catalogue at home and to make his selec- 
tions there. This is an essential feature of the sys- 
tem. The catalogue gives him all the means for 
making a choice, and while at home during the 
week, with ample leisure for the purpose, he pre- 
pares his card just as he prepares his lesson. He 
has the opportunity of consulting his parents, his 
brothers and sisters, or any members of the school 
whom he may meet, and he makes his choice with 
the fullest deliberation, instead of doing it in the haste 
and confusion of a brief interval in school. 

5. Returning Cards and Books. The librarian 
or his assistant has a table at the door of entrance of 
the school-room, and each scholar on entering the 
school, before going to his class, hands his card and 
his library book to the librarian. That is all the 
scholar has to do with the matter until he is dismissed 
at the close of the school. 



THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL LIBRARY. 303 

6. Receiving Cards and Books. At the close of 
the school the librarian and his assistants stand at 
the door of exit and give to each scholar as he passes 
out the book selected for him, and his card with it. 
The superintendent of course has to watch the op- 
eration, and to dismiss the classes only as fast as they 
are disposed of by the librarian. The plan, how- 
ever, is so simple in its working that the books and 
cards can be given out as fast as it is proper for a 
school to be dismissed. 

By this plan of taking in and giving out the books 
it will be seen that all confusion in the school and 
interruption of lessons arising out of the operations 
of the library is absolutely excluded. 

7. Numbering the Books. Some cheap, con- 
venient and effective w r ay of numbering the books is 
needed, whatever mode of registration and distribu- 
tion is adopted. For this purpose nothing with which 
I am acquainted is comparable to " Geisfs Adhesive 
Labels" In the State Normal School under my 
direction, I am sure that the use of these labels saves 
the institution the loss of books to the value of two 
to three hundred dollars a year. 

It remains that I explain 

♦ The Work of the Librarian, 

It is obvious that the plan described for selecting, 
taking in and giving out the books has advantages 
in itself, without any reference to the librarian's work. 
Whatever way the librarian may take for executing 



304 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL LIBRAE T. 

his difficult task, it will still be very greatly to his 
convenience and to that of the teacher that the books 
should be selected by the scholars at their homes, 
that they should be handed in at the door on enter- 
ing school, and given out at the door on leaving. 
This gives the librarian the entire time of the session 
for putting away the books returned, getting out the 
books ordered and making the necessary records. 

The most time-consuming part of the whole oper- 
ation is that of the registration, and for this a plan 
has been invented that is truly marvellous in its, sim- 
plicity and its completeness. The plan referred to 
is known as " The Check System Library Regis- 
ter" (Ray's patent). I will endeavor to give my 
readers as clear an idea of it as I can by a mere 
verbal description : 

1. The Checks, These are small slips of tin, of 
the size of the accompanying engraving : 



C 




At one end of the slip is a circular shield with a num 
ber painted on it, and near to where this shield is 
placed the slip has a double bend or curve, creating 
a sort of shoulder, and giving the slip, when seen 
edgewise, this appearance : 

\ 



THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL LIBRARY. 305 

The tin slip, or check, as it is called, is to be inserted 
at the top of the book, between the leaves, in this 
manner : 



and the object of the shoulder is to prevent the check 
from slipping down too far and to keep the number 
up full in sight. 

The librarian needs as many checks as there are 
volumes in the library. The checks are numbered 
from 1 up, to correspond to the number of the books. 
Each book when placed in the shelf has its check 
inserted in the top, as above. 

2. The Register. This is something like a big 
portfolio, each of the pages being divided into five 
rows of twelve compartments each, making sixty to 
a page. The cut on the following page represents a 
section of a single page of the Register. 

Each compartment is numbered, and represents 
one scholar or teacher. Compartment No. 17, for in- 
stance, belongs to scholar or teacher No. 17, and so 
of the others. The Register is made with two, four 
and six pages, according to the size of the school. 
26* u 



306 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL LI BR ART. 



Section of the Library Register. 





13 
1 


















1 
































z 


- 
























z 



























































14 
1 




~ 




~ 


~ 








~ 


— 










































~ 

















15 
1 




- 


















- 


- 


_ 


_ 





























- 






























- 


- 































16 
1 



































































































~ 


- 


- 


- 




















~ 























17 
1 

























































THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL LIBRARY. 307 

Here is a single compartment of the actual size 
used in the Register : 



17 



_ — A. JL JL JL jL ■•* JL JLJL * ° 

1 

2 

4 
5 




The perpendicular lines divide it into twelve spaces, 
one for each month in the year. The horizontal 
lines divide it into five spaces, that being the greatest 
number of Sundays that ever occur in one month. 
There are blank spaces, therefore, for every Sunday 
in the year. On the right margin is a slit for insert- 
ing the flat part of the check. 

This slit forms a very important part in the econ- 
omy of the business. It is the means by which the 
librarian charges a book or cancels a charge. If 
pupil or teacher No. 17, for instance, has called for 
book No. 35, the librarian, on finding said book, 
takes the check from the volume and slips it into the 
slit, as in the figure. There it remains as a charge 
against the representative of that compartment. 
When scholar or teacher No. 17 returns the book, 
all the librarian has' to do in order to cancel the 
charge is to take the check put of the slit, put it into 
the book, and put the book back into the library. 



308 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL LIBRARY. 

The whole thing is the work of a moment, and it 
requires the use of neither pen nor pencil. Besides 
this, it enables the librarian to see at a glance 
whether the applicant, No. 17, has or has not a book 
charged to him, and so to carry out with entire ease 
the important rule of giving no one a new book 
until the old one is returned. 

The object of the blank spaces is this : When the 
librarian finds that a particular scholar is irregular 
in his attendance, or negligent about returning his 
books, it is sometimes important to record the time 
when a book is given out. In such a case, all the 
librarian has to do is to draw an oblique line through 
the appropriate space. Thus in the figure it is shown 
that No. 17 not only has out book No. 35, but that 
he took it out on the third Sunday in July. This 
particularity of date helps sometimes in the recovery 
of a missing volume. When a book thus doubly 
charged is returned to the library, the librarian not 
only removes the check (which cancels the general 
charge), but also draws a slant line across the other 
in the opposite direction ; or, if the line is made with 
a lead pencil, he may erase it with a rubber. 

Some librarians enter the date in all cases, but 
this is not recommended. 

Now, let us see what the librarian has to do : 

1. The books and the library cards are collected 
at the door at the opening of the school. 

2. The books being brought to the library table, 
he takes up one volume at a time, looks at its num- 



THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL LIBRARY. 309 

ber, and then at his Register, to see against whom 
(or rather against what number) it is charged ; re- 
moves the check from the Register, puts it into the 
book, and puts the book in its place in the library. 
So he goes on, book after book, until all the books 
brought in are disposed of. 

3. Next, he takes up a library card ; sees what 
volumes are ordered on it ; selects one of them (the 
first that happens to be in) ; takes the check from 
the book and puts it into the appropriate slit in the 
Register, and puts the library card into the book 
with the number of the applicant sticking out at one 
end, to show to whom the book and card are to be 
given. Thus: 




He proceeds in this way, card after card, until all 
the orders are executed. 

4. The books thus selected are then assorted into 
heaps for delivery, each heap representing a class. 

5. The heaps are taken to the table or shelf at the 
door, and finally the books are handed by the 
librarian and his assistants to the individual scholars 
as they pass out. 

It has taken a good many words to explain this pro- 
cess, but the process itself is one of the simplest and 
least embarrassing that it is possible to conceive. 



CHAPTER VII. 



RELATIONS OF THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL 
OTHER RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS. 



TO 




HAVE failed entirely in my purpose if I 
have not, in a great variety of ways, made 
known my opinion that the Sunday-school 
is not an institution standing by itself. On the con- 
trary, according to the view of it advocated in these 
pages, it has numerous most important, some of 
them organic, relations with the other leading insti- 
tutions of religion. Some of these relations will 
occupy the present chapter. 

i. The Sunday-school and the Church. 

The Sunday-school could have no more danger- 
ous enemy than one who should persuade its friends 
that they were or could be in any way antagonistic 
to the church. Who support, cherish, establish and 
keep alive the Sunday-school? The church. Who 
are its superintendents and teachers? The members 
of the church. Where is the school ordinarily held? 
In the church, or in some building belonging to the 

310 



RELATIONS OF THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL. 31 1 

church. Whence does it take its name? From the 
church to which it belongs. It is the school of the 
Tabernacle Baptist, of the Epiphany, of the Tenth 
Presbyterian, of the Green Street Methodist, or of 
some other church. A school is considered and 
spoken of as belonging to some particular church, 
just as a boy or a girl is thought of as having a 
father and mother and as belonging to some par- 
ticular family. There are indeed orphan children 
and street children not thus blessed, for whom 
public philanthropy must in some way provide. 
But these are the exceptions. So there are schools 
in out-of-the-way places, where there is no one 
church to care for them or own them, and they must 
be cared for, if at all, by godly men and women of 
various denominations uniting in the good work. 
These are the union schools of frontier regions. 
Some of the mission-schools of our cities are of the 
same character. But even these soon cease to be 
orphans, being adopted by some church, and thus 
brought into the family relation. Go through the 
length and breadth of the land, and nine-tenths of 
all the Sunday-schools to be found are the schools 
of some particular church. The proportion of 
schools which hold no such relation, which are in- 
dependent organizations, is smaller than the propor- 
tion of children in the community who have no 
parents of their own to look to. 

The Sunday-school is the child of the church. It 
springs from the church. It is only one of the 



312 RELATIONS TO OTHER 

church's modes of acting, in evangelizing the world. 
The church, in endeavoring to carry out the Master's 
command to indoctrinate society with the precepts 
of the gospel, takes this among other modes of doing 
it. It proclaims the gospel from its pulpits. It 
draws the reins of parental responsibility, thus prop- 
agating religious truths by means of the family or- 
ganization. It sends forth Bibles, tracts and books, 
to reach those not touched by the pulpit or the family. 
It gathers the young into Sunday-schools, still further 
to supplement the teaching given by other means. 

The church with all her efforts is unable to secure, 
even from godly parents, the amount of religious in- 
struction which their children require. Then there 
are the countless numbers of children whose parents 
are indifferent and irreligious. The church feels, 
therefore, that she has need of every legitimate 
means, and that she must push them to the utmost 
if she would fully execute her trust in the work of 
evangelizing society. The church does not regard 
the Sunday-school as antagonistic to parental and 
family instruction, any more than a general would 
regard his cavalry or his artillery as antagonistic to 
his infantry. All means are needed in this great 
work. 

I have yet to see the first Sunday-school teacher 
who is not delighted when he finds parents giving 
their children instruction in addition to that received 
at the school. I have yet to see the first teacher 
whose heart does not bound with joy on seeing his 



RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS. 313 

pastor and elders and other officers of the church 
taking hold of the school, mingling actively and effi- 
ciently in its affairs, and showing that they consider 
it as theirs. 

Whenever I see any one working himself up into 
a suspicion that the Sunday-school is a something 
that is going to override or supersede the church, or 
arming himself with ecclesiastical legislation against 
it as against an enemy that needs bridling, I cannot 
but feel that the wiser course for such a person would 
be to enter into the cause itself w T ith a little warmer 
sympathy. 

Persons holding opinions of this kind, I am happy 
to believe, are much fewer now than they were some 
years ago. A healthy sentiment has been aw T akened 
in the public mind in regard to the true relation of the 
Sunday-school to the church. There was at one 
time not exactly a definite theory, but a vague, un- 
defined feeling, that the Sunday-school was an insti- 
tution by itself, like a temperance society or a hos- 
pital. As the institution has grown in importance 
and efficiency, a clearer apprehension has arisen in 
the minds of Christian people in regard to its true 
position. There are few thoughtful Christians now 
who do not recognize the Sunday-school as one of 
the agencies of the church, and who do not theoret- 
ically hold the church responsible for maintaining 
such an agency. A church that did not maintain a 
Sunday-school would be in the popular estimation 
almost as great an anomaly as a church that did not 
27 



3H RELATIONS TO OTHER 

maintain public worship. At the same time there is 
in some of our largest and most influential denomi- 
nations a want of definite, official action on this sub- 
ject, which is withholding from the institution its 
most natural and powerful means of growth and 
efficiency. 

Why should a cause of such vital importance be 
left at such loose ends? Is the religious training of 
its youth a matter to be left to casual impulse or to 
individual caprice? Has not the Sunday-school a 
right to a place in the ordinary business of ecclesi- 
astical assemblies as much as has the theological 
seminary, the education of ministers, church exten- 
sion, domestic missions or foreign missions? 

What I urge upon ecclesiastical bodies is that they 
take some action which shall make the consideration 
of the Sunday-school interest a part of the standing 
order of business, both for the supreme judicatory 
itself and for all the subordinate church courts for 
which it legislates, in regular succession, down 
through Synods, Presbyteries, Sessions, Consistories, 
Vestries, and so forth. Only let it once be estab- 
lished that Sunday-school operations are a part of 
the church doings which are to be reported for re- 
view by the appointed church authorities, and a 
great point will be gained both in checking irregu- 
larities and extravagances on the one side, and on 
the other side in giving strength, solidity and com- 
prehensiveness to the whole system. 

It is not far to go to find topics which in the pres- 



RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS. 315 

ent aspect of the Sunday-school movement require 
grave consideration at the hands of the ablest and 
wisest men of every church. The enormous — it is 
not too strong to say, the appalling — multiplication 
of Sunday-school library books is one of these topics. 
Four or five millions of these little volumes are taken 
home and greedily devoured every week. How 
much of this reading is beneficial, and how much of 
it is debauching? Is not the question one of as much 
interest as whether Turrettin still holds its place in 
didactic theology? Should the temperance question 
and temperance organizations and pledges enter into 
the Sunday-school movement? Should the Sunday- 
school be made the nucleus for missionary collec- 
tions? and if so, for what purposes? Should the 
training of youth to the habit of giving and the in- 
struction of them in regard to the objects on which 
to bestow their benefactions be left entirely to chance 
or to the smartness of enterprising and often irre- 
sponsible agents ? or should this whole subject be un- 
der some wise and responsible guidance from the 
recognized authorities of the church ? How may 
we secure more complete and reliable Sunday-school 
statistics? Ought not the annual returns from 
churches and parishes to embrace a column devoted 
to this subject, showing the number of scholars, 
teachers, conversions, etc. ? 

The Methodists and the Baptists some years ago 
took the right ground on this subject, making the 
Sunday-school operations of their churches the ob- 



3*6 RELATIONS TO OTHER 

ject of systematic ecclesiastical supervision and con- 
trol, and they are reaping the benefit of this course 
in the greatly accelerated growth of their schools. 

Bishop Stevens, of the Episcopal church in Penn- 
sylvania, in his charge to the clergy of his diocese 
some years ago, said : " It is the duty of the minister 
to put himself at the head of his [Sunday] school ; 
not, indeed, as its superintendent — that perhaps had 
better be a lay person — but he should be its control- 
ling and governing power. He should select his su- 
perintendent and teachers, should direct the studies 
and the school with all the appliances necessary for 
its largest usefulness. " 

The Presbyterian General Assembly (New School), 
before the late re-union, in a report on Sunday-schools, 
used the following language : 

" The danger is that the Sabbath-school may be- 
come detached from its proper connection with the 
church and its authorities, and assume an independ- 
ence which must prove in the end injurious both to 
itself and the church. 

" This severance has, we learn, actually taken 
place in some instances, and the proper shepherd of 
the flock can appear before the lambs only by the suf- 
ferance of the superintendent ; and so the young, cut 
off from their appointed guardians, are exposed to 
influences which cannot be brought under proper 
supervision and control." 

In accordance with this report the Assembly passed 
a resolution in these words : " That it belongs em- 



RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS. 3*7 

phatically to the pastor and elders of each congrega- 
tion to direct and supervise the whole work of the 
spiritual training of the young, and that it is an im- 
portant part of the functions of their office both to 
encourage parents to fidelity in bringing up their 
children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, 
and also to secure the co-operation of all the compe- 
tent members of the church in the religious educa- 
tion of all the children and youth to whom they can 
gain access." 

The Presbyterian Publication Committee (New 
School) also issued a tract on this subject, in which 
the relations of the Sunday-school to the church are 
set forth with clearness and force, and are placed on 
precisely the same ground as that which I have here 
advocated. 

The united body signalized their happy reunion 
by some judicious action on this subject. The 
matter was brought forward under the auspices of 
Dr. McCosh, and after some opposition and an 
earnest debate resulted in the adoption of the follow- 
ing resolution : 

" That the Board [of Publication] at as early a 
date as possible consider the propriety of establish- 
ing a Department of Sabbath-schools, whose office 
it shall be to promote the number and efficiency of 
Sabbath-schools throughout the congregations of the 
Presbyterian church. " 

I congratulate this great re-united church on the 
important movement thus auspiciously begun. The 
27* 



318 RELATIONS TO OTHER 

resolution of the Assembly, it is true, is not impera- 
tive, but only recommendatory. Yet so decided a 
recommendation will hardly go by unheeded. I 
take it for granted, therefore, that this great and 
prosperous church will soon have a recognized and 
responsible agency of its own, for giving direction, 
life and system to this important part of its opera- 
tions, and that hereafter, in every church court, from 
the highest to the lowest, the Sunday-school will 
have its rightful place, just as much as the cause of 
Theological Seminaries, and that of Home and For- 
eign Missions. 

2. The Minister and the Sunday-school. 

I do not agree with Dr. Tyng and some other 
high authorities that the minister should be the act- 
ing superintendent of the Sunday-school. The 
amount of work to be done is too much, and it 
would lead in almost every case either to a neglect 
of the school or to a lowering of the standard of the 
pulpit performances. At the same time, I most fully 
believe that the minister should be the chief animat- 
ing soul of the school. The superintendent should 
be his right-hand man, his counsellor and co-worker 
in all his plans for sowing the seed in the hearts of 
the young of his charge. The minister should spend 
some time — not less certainly than half an hour — in 
his school every Sunday. He should know all that 
is going on in it. He should know every teacher 
and every scholar by face and by name, and what 



RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS. 319 

influences are at work in each department and in 
every class, and he should find the means to make 
his own influence felt in every movement of the 
school. Every scholar and every teacher should feel 
that the pastor is cognizant of his or her doings in 
the school — not, of course, by any system of espion- 
age, but simply by the fact of his constant and per- 
vading presence. The school, in short, should be 
thought of and spoken of as his. 

Am I laying upon the ministry too great a burden ? 
If an efficient working of the Sunday-school brings 
two souls into the church where the labors of the 
pulpit bring one, if the minister's heart, all aglow 
with fire in the school, burns thereby with increased 
brightness and intensity in the pulpit, should not the 
minister consider the Sunday-school a part of the 
burden that the Master has put upon him? 

Our conventions, our institutes, our religious 
journals, are doing much for adding to the effi- 
ciency of our Sunday-schools. But our main hope, 
after all, is in the ministry. Our Sunday-schools 
will become what they should be, and will accom- 
plish the mighty results which they are capable of, 
when our pastors come fully up to the work, and 
not before. Here and there is a superintendent who 
has the fitness and the consecrated talent to work up 
and mould the materials of a congregation so as to 
make out of them a thoroughly efficient Sunday- 
school. But these are the exceptions. So here and 
there is a teacher thoroughly competent to the work. 



320 RELATIONS TO OTHER 

But in the great majority of cases, all over the land, 
superintendents and teachers have to be made. The 
raw material exists in the greatest abundance in all 
churches. I never saw a church yet, big or little, in 
country or city, that did not contain in itself the 
materials, the men and women, capable of fitting 
out a school with a first-rate corps of teachers and a 
good superintendent. But usually these materials 
bear about the same relation to the actual work that 
cotton growing in the field bears to the finished 
fabric. The man who is to pick the cotton, gin it- 
sort it, spin it and weave it into cloth ready for use 
is the minister. He must select the men and 
women of his flock who have the natural fitness for 
taking care of the lambs. He must enlist their 
sympathies in the work, and know how to counsel 
and direct them in it. He is not to do the work of 
the school himself, but he should be the animating 
spirit of those who do it. To do all this he must, 
however, be himself practically familiar with it. A 
housekeeper who has made bread herself can train 
a domestic to make bread. A farmer who has him- 
self sown and tilled the field can train his boys to 
do it. A master mechanic whose own fingers 
know how to wield the tools of his craft can alone 
make other craftsmen. 

In all our congregations are the materials, the 
men and women, in abundance ; but who shall con- 
vert them into teachers? This is the one deside- 
ratum for making schools. 



RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS, 32 1 

Some congregations, here and there, are blessed 
with a man, a layman, whose education, training, 
talents, choice and actual experience mark him out 
for this service. These, however, are the exceptions. 
But in every church where there is a settled pastor 
there is one man whose office ought to include this 
idea, just as much as that of preaching sermons. 

The minister ought to be an expert in Sunday- 
school matters. He ought to be what the graduates 
of a military school are to unskilled volunteers at the 
outbreak of a war ; and if ever the noble four hun- 
dred thousand willing workers now engaged in the 
American Sunday-school become a conquering army 
in the Master's service, it must be by an adequate 
infusion of experts into the mass to organize and 
guide them to victory. 

Our military schools are the theological semi- 
naries. Our young ministers must be trained to the 
Sunday-school work as well as to the business of 
writing sermons. 

Some of our writers seem to be under the appre- 
hension that the Sunday-school work is in danger 
from the interference of ministers. They speak of 
it as a work peculiar to laymen — one in which cler- 
ical interposition would be a sort of intrusion and 
impertinence. Such notions are utterly alien to every 
idea that I have formed of this work. If at times 
I have been disposed to utter a sharp criticism upon 
ministers in regard to the Sunday-school work, it has 
been for their indifference, not for over-interference. 

V 



322 RELATIONS TO OTHER 

I have known pastors — not many, but here and there 
one — who did not seem to realize the immense power 
of the institution for carrying out their appropriate 
work, and who practically stood aloof from it. 
There are perhaps no ministers w T ho would be will- 
ing to admit that they stand in this position. But 
they do not throw themselves heartily into the move- 
ment ; they catch no inspiration from it ; they give 
no inspiration to it, any more than they would do in 
regard to any ordinary philanthropic enterprise. 
They look on with approbation, and even with some 
degree of interest, but it is as spectators rather than 
as actors. When I have seen such a pastor I have 
felt at times like stirring him up, and, if necessary, 
with sharp words. 

I do not think it desirable, ordinarily, as I have 
said before, for the pastor to superintend the Sunday- 
school. There is not one minister in a thousand that 
has the physical strength to do so. A man needs to 
go into the pulpit with his energies fresh and in full 
vigor. If lie rises to preach after exhausting himself 
mentally and bodily in the school-room, and with 
his voice husky by use, he would be doing a serious 
wrong. But he cannot by any possibility be an in- 
truder in the Sunday-school any more than he could 
be in the prayer-meeting or the lecture-room. There 
is no one whom superintendent, teachers and schol- 
ars so universally delight to see in the school-room 
as the minister. The minister neglects an important 
duty and misses a great privilege who does not visit 



RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS. 323 

his Sunday-school habitually, and, if possible, every 
Sunday, who does not keep himself thoroughly ac- 
quainted with what is going on there, and who does 
not promptly interpose, if need be, to correct or pre- 
vent abuses. The Sunday-school is not something 
outside of or apart from the church ; it is the church 
itself. It is one of the ways in which the church is 
putting forth its spiritual life and fulfilling its divine 
mission. It is the creature of the church, and should 
be under the control of the church as much as the 
weekly prayer-meeting. 

It is one of the best features of the Sunday-school 
work that all classes can engage in it. More than 
any other operation in which the church is engaged 
it enlists laymen. It furnishes a field in which every 
one may find something to do for the Master. But 
there is no motive or warrant for a layman to work 
in the Sunday-school which does not apply with 
equal and even greater force to a minister. Who, if 
not the minister, is interested in the religious training 
of the young? Who, if not the minister, is under 
obligation to see that the lambs of the flock are cared 
for? 

No pastor who is wise will meddle with the small 
details of the school-room. If a superintendent is to 
get along comfortably and efficiently, he needs to 
enjoy largely the confidence of those above him as 
well as of those below him. But then the superin- 
tendent should not shrink from recognizing the fact 
that there are those above him ; any other theory 



324 RELATIONS TO OTHER 

than this will lead to inevitable confusion and dis- 
order in our Sunday-school affairs. We cannot 
safely have an imperium in imperio in religious any 
more than in civil matters. In each particular 
church there must be one general centre of authority, 
whether pastor, session, consistory or congregation. 
Whatever that power is which controls the teachings 
of the pulpit and the exercises of public worship in 
the church, the lecture-room and the prayer-meeting, 
it ought to and must in the last resort have the control 
of the Sunday-school also. To set up the Sunday- 
school as an independent and self-existent organiza- 
tion is simply monstrous. 

3. The Sunday-school and Parental Responsibility \ 

In the agitation of the Sunday-school cause and of 
the duties of pastors and teachers to the children, 
there is some danger of forgetting entirely the exist- 
ence of parents. I would go as far as almost any 
one in urging upon the church the duty of looking 
after the religious interests of the young. Just so far 
as a man is a Christian at all will he seek to promote 
Christ's cause, and one of the most efficient ways of 
promoting that cause is to indoctrinate youth in the 
principles of religion. This is a plain, direct, con- 
clusive argument for Sunday-schools, and for the 
duty of the church as such, and of every individual 
member of the church to support the institution. A 
church is guilty which allows any child to grow up 
in irreligion whom it has the means of reaching and 



RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS. 325 

reclaiming. What is true of a church is true of its 
members individually. 

But this responsibility of the church to look after 
a child by no means relieves the parents from respon- 
sibility in regard to the same child. If the child is 
lost and God holds the church guilty for the loss, it 
does not follow that he will hold the parent guiltless. 
It is a case of double responsibility for the same ob- 
ject. The object — the salvation of the child — is so 
important that God would put it under double guard. 
It is like taking two endorsers to a note ; the failure 
of one endorser does not exonerate the other. The 
holder has his remedy equally against both, and thus 
the fulfilment of the obligation is better secured. 

The duties of teachers to the children are the theme 
of constant discussion and illustration. I would not 
have it otherwise. But let us not ignore the fact that 
parents have even a greater stake than teachers have 
in the same issue. The relations of the teacher to 
the matter are only inferential and secondary ; those 
of the parent are primary and paramount. No duty 
of one human being to another is more direct, posi- 
tive and intransferable than that of a parent to edu- 
cate his child religiously as well as intellectually. 
The mistake that many parents make practically, 
and that we are all in danger of making theoretically, 
is in' ; supposing that this duty can be delegated. 
Some portions of a child's education can be given 
by strangers, but other, and by far the most import- 
ant portions, can be given- only by the parent. If 
28 



326 RELATIONS TO OTHER 

the horne education of a child is deficient, the school, 
with all its means and appliances, will never educate 
him. He may be taught many things, but his edu- 
cation can never be complete. 

Just here it is that parents otherwise judicious 
and thoughtful make a mistake. They think that 
if they secure for their child a good school, their 
duty in the matter is ended. Business men, mer- 
chants, often make this mistake. They cannot spare 
time from their business to look after their children. 
They will pay liberally for a good teacher, but, 
having done that, they expect the teacher to relieve 
them from all further care in the matter. Hundreds 
and hundreds of times, in my professional labors, 
have I encountered this fact. A laboring man sends 
his child to a good public school, and because it is a 
good school he is disappointed if his child does not 
turn out well. A man of wealth pays his hundreds 
to a private teacher, and he is vexed to find that his 
boy does not become a pattern of all that the cir- 
cular holds out. The poor man has his daily labor 
to attend to, and he thinks he has no time to be 
troubled with looking after his children. The rich 
man has his business enterprises, that absorb his 
time and his thoughts, so that nothing is left for 
home duties. Rich and poor alike forget that a part 
of the price for the education of their children is to be 
paid by personal service. No amount of money 
expenditure, whether from the public or the private 
purse, can pay this debt. The man who brings a 



RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS. Z 2 1 

child into the world puts himself under a perpetual 
obligation of personal service to that child. A man 
might as well expect to keep himself in health by 
paying annually a doctor's bill, while not observing 
personally the laws of health. A parent should lay 
it to his account that he owes to his child a certain 
amount daily, and that by no means a small amount, 
of his time, thoughts and personal care. The parent 
who ignores or neglects this, and who hopes to meet 
the case by invoking the instrumentality of the state 
or of the church, or by spending freely his thousands 
upon schools and teachers, is surely laying up for 
himself multiplied sorrows. 

What can the Sunday-school teacher do for a child 
during the one hour and a half on Sunday, if during 
all the remaining hours and days of the week at 
home the Sunday lesson is quietly ignored ? If the 
Sunday-school teacher, who has no interest in any 
child beyond the promptings of Christian benevo- 
lence, is willing to endure the labor of teaching him, 
and of preparing himself for that teaching by long 
hours of study during the week, and is willing to 
step aside from his worldly employments to attend 
meetings, Institutes and Normal classes, in order to 
^t himself for the task of giving my child skilful re- 
ligious guidance and instruction, shame on me if I 
am not willing to give some portion of my time, 
labor and thought to the same end ! Shame on me 
if I do not see personally that my child goes to 
school thoroughly prepared in his lesson ! Shame 



3^8 RELATIONS TO OTHER 

on me if I do not myself read and study and think 
on the subject, in order to be thoroughly efficient 
and skilful in the work of co-operation with the 
teacher of my child, and if I do nofmyself attend 
meetings, institutes and conventions as a learner, 
that I may better know how to do my part in the 
work of his education ! 

4. Atte?zdance of Children in Church. 

I sympathize fully with those who deprecate any 
arrangement that tends to draw away children from 
the house of God. The Sunday-school is no sub- 
stitute for the church. Indeed, the greatest argu- 
ment in its favor, in my estimate, has always been, 
that it brings the young to the church. It is a feeder 
for the church. If in any instance the school is so 
conducted, with respect to its teachings or its ses- 
sions, or any of its arrangements, as to lead either 
young or old away from the church, to diminish the 
stated attendance upon the regular services of the 
church, or to become regarded by scholars or teach- 
ers as an equivalent for the public worship of God 
in his sanctuary, — assuredly in such a case there has 
been a sad mistake. 

This attendance upon church is not a question oft 
one session or of two. I have known schools holding 
two sessions whose children in large numbers at- 
tended the church services. I have known other 
schools holding but one session whose children ab- 
sented themselves from church. So far as my own 



RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS. 329 

personal experience and observation go, children 
who attend Sunday-school twice a day are just as 
likely to attend church as those who go to school but 
orice. Teachers in arguing this matter make the 
mistake of judging of the children's feelings by their 
own. To the teacher, especially to one whose 
health is at all delicate, it becomes an exhausting 
labor to attend two school sessions and two church 
services. If I have ever had any misgivings about 
the propriety of two sessions, it has been on account 
of the teacher, not on account of the children. The 
school, which to the faithful teacher is necessarily 
laborious and exhausting, is to the scholar almost a 
recreation. Look at the scholars as they issue from 
any well-conducted school. You see no jaded looks 
among them. They are as full of life and buoyancy 
as when they left home in the morning. They are 
just as ready and as fitted, physically and mentally, 
for attending the church service, as if they had come 
fresh from home. Sometimes more so. For there 
is a stir and a social excitement in the school-room 
which cannot always be found at home, and this stir 
and excitement awaken the faculties and make them 
more ready for new mental occupation. 

Let us apply a little arithmetic to this subject. 
The morning session usually occupies one hour and 
a half, the church service an equal time. Here is 
a confinement of three hours before dinner, not con- 
tinuous, however, but relieved by the transition from 
the school to the church, and by numerous changes 

28* 



33° RELATIONS TO OTHER 

of occupation during the three hours. In the after- 
noon, the session continues usually one hour, and the 
church service one hour and a half. Here then are 
five hours and a half hours of confinement, all told. 
This, it is said, is too much for childhood and youth. 
It is more than they can bear, and when compelled 
to give full attendance upon school both parts of the 
day, they are so jaded that they cannot and ought 
not to attend church. How is it on Monday, and 
on every other day except Sunday? These same 
children in the weekday-schools attend regularly 
five and six hours a day, and no harm done. Three 
hours in the morning and two or three in the after- 
noon, often five or six hours continuously, unrelieved 
by change or transition, and with very brief and pre- 
carious intermissions. Would the writers who con- 
tend that the children are so fagged out by attending 
Sunday-school an hour and a half in the morning 
and an hour in the afternoon, that they are physi- 
cally disqualified for the church service, be willing 
to limit the attendance of children upon the week- 
day-school to two hours and a half daily? Is the 
importance of secular instruction so much greater 
than that of religious instruction that while we give 
to the former thirty hours a week in school, we can 
afford to whittle down the latter to a bare allowance 
of an hour and a half in school? 

I repeat, the attendance of children upon the 
church service is not a question of sessions. When 
the children leave the school, they are in just as 



RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS. 33 1 

good a condition for entering the church as if they 
were fresh from home — in many cases, more so. 
In. a great majority of cases, those children who on 
being dismissed from school do not enter the church 
would not have gone to church if they had not been 
at school. The church is not attractive to them. 
With all respect to some who have argued on the 
other side, I do not think the church is to be made 
attractive by making the school repulsive. Continue 
to the school all the attractions it has, and give it 
manifold more. But let the church itself have some 
attractions for the young. If children are driven 
from the school into the church, like sheep into a 
pen, by mere naked authority, the effect cannot fail 
to be disastrous. 

Children ordinarily have nothing to do in church. 
They are not allowed to join in the singing ; it 
might disturb the quartette in the gallery. They 
are not required to follow the minister in the reading 
of the Scriptures. There is nothing in the sermon 
addressed to them, and usually little in it which they 
can understand. They are merely required to sit 
still and do nothing. Truly, it is a hard task. Flesh 
and blood cry out against it. Pounding stone in the 
street is nothing to it. No wonder that children are 
rebellious on the subject. 

People, old or young, are interested in a service 
in proportion as they have an active participation in 
it. I cannot but think it a great mistake, in arrang- 
ing any public service, to have it so ordered that the 



33 2 RELATIONS TO OTHER. 

mass of the people should be mere passive recipients 
or spectators. In proportion as one single func- 
tionary becomes a mere factotum, do the rest of the 
congregation lose interest. I know that it is not the 
theory of any church service that the minister and 
the choir are to be the active, and the congregation 
merely passive, participants in it. In theory, when 
the minister reads the Scriptures, the congregation 
are supposed to read with him, though not always 
audibly. When he prays, it is not that he prays 
for them, but they all pray through his one voice. 
All likewise are supposed to sing God's praises, the 
choir acting as a sort of support and guide to voices 
not so well trained. Something like this may per- 
haps be the theory. But we are now inquiring for 
facts, not for theories. It is a fact which no one 
will probably call in question that in some churches, 
during the public services, the mass of the congrega- 
tion do nothing. They may do mental acts. But 
so far as material, bodily acts are concerned, they 
are simply passive. 

Now grown persons, with minds matured and dis- 
ciplined, may be able, by a process of mere mental ab- 
straction, to enter somewhat into the various services. 
But it is not so with a child ; and I have often 
noticed that children are much more inclined to at- 
tend church in those congregations in which either 
the custom of the people, or the prescribed order of 
the service, gives to the congregation an active par- 
ticipation in what is going on, as in giving responses, 



RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS. 333 

in reading alternate verses of the Scripture, in 
general congregational singing, and so forth. Let 
parents and teachers who wish children to become 
interested in the church service see that they take as 
active a part in it as the prescribed order of the 
church will permit. Let the seats which they oc- 
cupy be furnished with Bibles and hymn-books. 
When the minister reads a chapter, let each child 
be required to find it in his Bible and follow the 
reading, the parent or teacher setting the example. 
When the hymn is announced, let each child find it 
and follow the reading when it is read, and join in 
the singing to the best of his ability when it is sung. 
Let children be trained to assume a devotional 
attitude during prayer, and taught to endeavor men- 
tally to follow the prayer and join in it. If the prayer 
be extemporaneous, some petitions specially suited 
to the thoughts and the wants of the young will aid 
wonderfully in giving the young an interest in the 
prayer. Let them, of course, be required always to 
turn to the text when announced, and make a note 
of it. 

Beyond this, I know that I am on ticklish ground. 
But will not our clerical brethren listen for once to 
a short sermon from a lay brother ? Not every min- 
ister has the gift to preach sermons to children as 
Dr. Newton does and as many others do. But this 
is not necessary. Indeed, except only as an occa- 
sional service, it is not' expedient or wise. But may 
not every minister in every sermon put in something 



334 RELATIONS TO OTHER 

which shall be level to the capacity of the child-part 
of his audience? May not every minister in the 
composition of his sermon remember that children 
are to be among his hearers? Though he cannot 
perhaps make his whole discourse such that they can 
follow it, yet surely he can bring some of its para- 
graphs within the range of their intellectual vision. 
And let him be sure of one thing : no part of his dis- 
course will be so acceptable to the whole congrega- 
tion or receive such universal attention as those pas- 
sages which were intended especially for the little 
ones, and which the little ones appropriate as their 
own. Will not our ministers think of this? Do, 
brethren, say something every Sunday to the chil- 
dren. The children will then feel that they have 
something to come to church for. 

Some consideration of the bodily comfort of chil- 
dren should find its way into the brains of those who 
plan and build our church edifices. Church archi- 
tects and building committees have much to answer 
for. A house of worship should not be built for the 
purpose of illustrating some particular style of archi- 
tecture, or as a pattern card of some particular archi- 
tect or builder, but for the convenience and accom- 
modation of the worshippers in attending upon the 
public service of God. Whatever of ornament or of 
architectural device can be had- in connection with 
this, and subordinate to it, is well. But, after all, 
the accommodation of the worshippers is the main 
design, and should ever be kept uppermost in the 



RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS. 335 

thoughts of the builders. Yet when, in the consulta- 
tions of a building committee of a church, was the 
question ever asked, How far will our children be 
made comfortable and find their places pleasant and 
attractive in this house which we are planning? It 
is not uncommon in these days to spend a hundred 
thousand dollars upon a church edifice. Does a dol- 
lar of these hundred thousand ever go directly or de- 
signedly toward making the seats or the furniture or 
any of the appointments of the building convenient 
and pleasant to children ? If we were to require our 
children to go to church in the clothes made for their 
parents, it would not be a whit more absurd than 
what we now do. Father's boots and long-tailed 
coat and steeple hat are just as suitable and comfort- 
able to little six-year-old Johnny as are the seat and 
the benches which were made to suit the persons 
and the limbs of adult people. If our grown-up 
folks could be obliged for a few Sundays to occupy 
for a couple of hours, twice a day, seats three feet 
wide and five feet high, so that during the whole 
service neither their feet could once rest upon the 
floor nor their persons lean against the back of the 
pew, they might begin to understand one of the rea- 
sons why children so often find the church a burden. 

5. School Accommodations. 

If our Sunday-schools are ever to be what we are 
aiming to make them— a great instrumentality of the 
church in doing her appointed work of evangelizing 



33 6 RELATIONS TO OTHER 

the masses — we must give them better accommoda- 
tions, and building committees and church architects 
will never rise to a proper comprehension of the 
wants of the case until Sunday-school men take the 
matter seriously in hand and agitate the subject. 
This should be a standing- topic at every gathering 
of Sunday-school teachers. I must be allowed to 
express some surprise that it attracts so little atten- 
tion. Look over the programme of topics for almost 
any convention, large or small, whether of city, 
county or State, and you will rarely find this subject 
on the list of those to be discussed. 

One reason probably why Sunday-school teachers 
do not agitate the subject is that each one considers 
the matter settled so far as he is concerned. His 
church is already built, and it is too late to make 
changes. If the school is properly accommodated, 
well and good ; if not, the thing is done, and all that 
is left is to make the best of what they have. Go on 
with the school in the gallery, or in the pews, or in 
the basement, or up in the belfry, or wherever it has 
been held hitherto, because it is out of the question 
to think of tearing the church down in order to re- 
construct it with reference to the wants of the Sun- 
day-school. This feeling of the hopelessness of the 
case puts a quietus upon all plans for improvement. 

But is this right or wise? See what prodigious 
improvement has been made in the construction of 
houses for the weekday-school. And how was this 
brought about ? By teachers and the friends of edu- 



RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS. 337 

cation keeping up a continual din on the subject, ex- 
posing the shabby condition of the old-fashioned 
school-houses, and clamoring for something better, 
until a public sentiment was created which compelled 
a better state of things. New churches are going up 
every year all over the land, and they are all being 
built, and they will continue to be built, in the old 
stereotyped way until, by talking, discussion and 
agitation of various kinds, we make it impossible for 
church architects and builders any longer to ignore 
the wants of the Sunday-school. 

Let me give in a few words my idea of what a 
Sunday-school does need for its accommodation. If 
I were about to embark in an enterprise having for 
its object to gather and build up a large, strong, 
working congregation, and had to construct the ne- 
cessary building or buildings for such a congrega- 
tion, I would say to the architect, Remember in your 
plans that the audience-room where the preaching is 
done is not the whole church, or all that is to be 
looked after. There will be as many people to be 
seated in the Sunday-school rooms as there will be 
in the church. The Sunday-school rooms should 
occupy as much space,— length, breadth and height 
— and should cost as much money, as the main audi- 
ence-room of the church. 

Why not? Why should we give a style of palatial 

elegance and comfort to the apartment which is to 

be occupied from half-past ten to twelve, and thrust 

the same number of people,- and to a great extent 

29 W 



33§ RELATIONS TO OTHER 

the same identical people, down into some dismal 
basement from nine to half-past ten ? 

If the main auditorium of the church is to cost fifty 
thousand dollars, and we wish to maintain a due 
proportion in the arrangements, we ought to spend 
another fifty thousand dollars on the school-rooms, 
and twenty-five thousand more on the lecture-room 
and its appertainings. Or, to vary the phrase, if the 
whole structure and furnishing are to cost one hun- 
dred and twenty-five thousand dollars, let twenty-five 
thousand go for the lecture-room, fifty thousand for 
the school, and fifty thousand for the church. Or, to 
generalize the problem, divide your money into five 
equal parts, and spend one-fifth on your lecture-room, 
two-fifths on your school-rooms, and two-fifths on 
your audience-chamber. 

I am in sober earnest in these statements. I be- 
lieve most thoroughly that the money bestowed upon 
a church enterprise, if expended in about these pro- 
portions, would yield better results, would sooner 
gather a good congregation and a flourishing and 
healthy church, than if expended in the usual way. 
For the religious wants of a congregation the audi- 
ence-room, or preaching-room, should bear about 
the same proportions to the remaining part of the 
edifice that the parlor of a dwelling-house bears to 
the other apartments. In building our churches we 
imitate some fashionable people whose houses are 
all parlor. 

In large Sunday-schools, such as we have, or might 



RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS, 339 

have, in cities and in inland towns and villages, and 
in some country congregations, in a school num- 
bering, say, three hundred scholars or more, we 
want, first, a large room, where all the school can be 
assembled for opening and closing services, and 
w T here a majority of the scholars can be taught, di- 
vided into classes. This room should be light and 
airy, suitably carpeted, the walls supplied with maps 
and blackboards, and the ceiling in no case less than 
twenty feet high. There should be a separate room 
of about one-third the size for the infant school. 
The ceiling of this also should be not less than twenty 
feet high. The infant school-room should be fur- 
nished with a rising gallery and supplied with picto- 
rial illustrations in great numbers and variety. There 
should be also several small rooms, nicely carpeted 
and furnished, for the Bible classes and the normal 
class. It would be well, also, though not essential, 
that the library should be kept in a room by itself. 

I do believe that, with the earnest spirit of im- 
provement now manifested by Sunday-school teach- 
ers, a great and wonderful stride forward would be 
made by the institution if our church builders would 
fairly recognize its claims and provide for its material 
wants. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 




I . Sunday-school Music. 

LL children love music, and almost all chil- 
dren love to sing. This instinctive desire 
has been wisely subsidized in aid of religion, 
and especially in aid of the Sunday-school. Singing 
makes the school attractive. In many districts chil- 
dren are literally sung into the school by hundreds. 
Music is made also the vehicle of direct religious 
teaching and impression. The words sung ought 
always to convey, and usually do convey, important 
and weighty truths, and these truths thus find a lodg- 
ment in the mind. Sacred song also is expressive of 
emotion. The child in singing gives by his voice 
expression to this emotion, and the mere act of giv- 
ing it expression reacts upon the mind itself just as 
a man in uttering the strong language of scorn works 
himself gradually into the feeling of scorn. In every 
view of the subject, therefore, I cannot but regard 
with interest and hope the very general attention 
that is now paid to singing in our Sunday-schools. 
340 



MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 341 

Music-books for this special purpose have been 
greatly multiplied, and though there is necessarily 
much difference in these boofts as to merit, I have 
never seen one that did not contain some sweet and 
beautiful tunes. These facts are of good omen. They 
ought to encourage the Sunday-school laborer and 
make him hopeful. 

In teaching children in the Sunday-school to sing 
there are some common-sense rules to be observed. 
First of all, the pieces selected should not contain any- 
thing light, irreverent or vulgar, either in the words 
themselves or in their associations. I have heard 
not a few pieces sung in Sunday-school that savored 
very decidedly of the circus and the negro minstrels. 
The argument for it with the superintendent was 
that it seemed to captivate the children. There was 
a stir and a movement about it which was pleasing, 
and the children sang it with a will. The argument 
would be just as good for introducing a game of base- 
ball or of marbles into the Sunday-school ; no doubt 
the children would go at it with a rush. I go as far 
as any one for pleasing the children. There is no 
use of trying to sing anything in school unless the 
children are pleased with it. But that is no reason 
for singing there everything they like. The thing 
sung must be devout, religious and elevating in its 
character. This is indispensable. 

But it by no means follows that either the words 
or the tune should be glum and chilling. On the 
contrary, our second rule is that the prevailing tone 
29 * 



34 2 MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 

both of the words and the music intended for the 
Sunday-school should be of a cheerful and buoyant 
character. There mu§t be life and movement about 
it. Expressions of gladness and exhilaration, of joy 
and hope, of love and desire, always take with the 
children. The movement of the song also should be 
quick and lively like the physical activity of children. 
Some schools go to an extreme in this matter ; their 
singing is at full gallop. The more common error, 
however, is on the other side, expecting children to 
sing in the slow, stately and solemn style suited to 
adults. It is essential to excellence in children's 
singing that it be childlike. Softness and gentleness 
in music are qualities that always please the little 
ones. These qualities also have a fine effect upon 
the order of the school, soothing asperities, quieting 
the tendency to noise and producing in some inde- 
scribable way a feeling of contentedness. 
The following cautions are to be observed : 
i. Mere noise is not singing. In some schools 
the children sing with a will — at least they go 
through with a vocal performance which can be 
heard a good way off, and which is called singing — 
but no one who has an ear for sweet sounds would 
call the performance music. There is a great deal of 
earnestness about it, a great expenditure of vocal 
power, but no melody, no harmony, nothing that' 
can be truly called song. 

2. Mere song is not sufficient. What we want 
in the Sunday-school is sweet sound employed to 



MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 343 

express and to cultivate religious emotion. Some 
of the pieces sung in Sunday-school are beautiful in 
their vocalization ; the ear is delighted and charmed, 
but the heart is not satisfied ; they express nothing, 
or, at best, something comparatively mean and trivial. 
No piece should find a place upon the Sunday-school 
programme unless it is devotional as well as musi- 
cal. It should express scriptural and religious sen- 
timent, — holy joy, gladness, penitence, hope, godly 
fear. 

3. The music of the school should be such as will 
be continued in the ?nusic of the sanctuary. Noth- 
ing is more common than to hear in the Sunday- 
school very excellent singing, every voice joining in 
and all enjoying the service ; but ten minutes later, 
in the same building, in a room separated from this 
by only a single wall, you shall see a congregation, 
composed largely of these same persons, sitting silent 
listeners to a quartette club performing in the gallery 
the music of the church. Why is this? Why can 
these scholars and teachers sing so well and so 
heartily in the school, while they can only sit dumb 
in the church ? It is not all their fault. The choir 
often sing pieces which none but a choir can sing. 
But this is not always the case. Some of the pieces 
sung in church are such as are suited to congrega- 
tional singing, and yet the members of the school 
never join in. The reason is that the church hymns 
and the church music are not sung in the school. 
This I hold to be all wrong-. While some few of 



344 MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 

the things sung in school should be such as are 
suited to the school only, yet the great majority of 
the hymns and tunes should be such as the children 
will sing in church when they become men and 
women. The Sunday-school service will thus be- 
come an important auxiliary and preparative to the 
church service. 

A superintendent who knows nothing about music 
himself, and who cannot sing at all, may yet secure 
excellent singing in his school if he has any one of 
even ordinary ability to lead. To accomplish this 
end, however, he must reserve to himself the selec- 
tion of the tunes. Let him only keep his eyes open 
and observe the effect of each tune upon the scholars. 
If it is one that produces wild excitement, and creates 
a tendency to noisiness after the singing is over, or 
if it is one that after fair trial the children will not 
take to and that evidently is a drag, drop it ; no 
matter how fine the music teacher pronounces it to 
be, drop it. It may be very good for a choir, or for 
professed musicians. But for the Sunday-school it 
is simply nil. There is no use of worrying the chil- 
dren with a tune that is a drag and a bore. An in- 
dispensable requisite in a Sunday-school tune is 
that it is one that the children themselves will love 
and will sing with pleasure, and of this fact the 
superintendent can judge just as well as the cho- 
rister, generally better. If a tune is a favorite with 
the scholars, you see it in their eyes the moment that 
it is announced, or that you begin to sing it. By 



MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 345 

this simple rule, of admitting no tunes. but those that 
prove themselves favorites, the exercise soon be- 
comes pleasurable and attractive, and the children 
get into the way of singing with their whole soul. 

It helps very much the learning of a tune for the 
children first to commit the words to memory. This 
should be secured partly by the labor of the teachers 
in the several classes, but also, and perhaps mainly, 
by a general concert recitation. Let the whole 
school say the words in concert, at the dictation 
of the superintendent, before they undertake to sing 
them. Some superintendents seem not to know 
how to secure entire harmony and thoroughness in a 
concert recitation. The main secret is in the man- 
ner of giving out the words to be repeated. The 
leader in such an exercise should give out a very 
small portion, only two or three words, at a time. 
He should keep his eyes on the smallest and dullest 
child in the room, and gauge his movements by the 
manifest capacity of that child. If the number of 
words given out at once is more than that child can 
readily take up and repeat, let him proceed more 
slowly, and shorten the portions. This rule is par- 
ticularly important in introducing a hymn that is 
quite new. Go over it in this way very slowly and 
thoroughly the first few times, securing a full and 
complete response from every voice in the room. 
After a while, he may proceed more rapidly, giving 
perhaps a whole line at a time, and finally the 
school, on being started with the first word, will go 



34 6 MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 

through the whole hymn without missing a word, 
and without a voice dropping out. This reciting a 
hymn thus in concert has other advantages besides 
merely securing that it shall be perfectly remem- 
bered. The voices of the whole school learn to 
move together. They learn to blend smoothly and 
harmoniously, and they acquire a precision and uni- 
formity of vocal action which are half the battle 
when they come to sing. This training the children 
to commit the words to memory and to recite them 
in concert is the work not of the chorister, but of 
the teachers and of the superintendent. According 
to my observation, it is very generally neglected, 
and much of the failure in Sunday-school singing is 
attributable to this cause. 

2. Sunday-school Anniversaries. 

Some superintendents and pastors disapprove en- 
tirely of Sunday-school anniversaries, and discounte- 
nance them in every way practicable. It is feared 
that the children will get their heads full of excite- 
ment, and that the show and bustle and slight 
irregularities of various kinds connected with a 
public celebration will divert attention from study 
and disturb the sober proprieties suitable to God's 
holy day and house. It is not to be denied that 
anniversaries may be so managed as to produce 
frivolous thoughts and behavior, and to make chil- 
dren vain and conceited. But so may the school 
itself, in its ordinary sessions, produce these same 



MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS, 347 

evils. The argument from the abuse of a thing is 
not valid against any right use of it. An anniversary 
in a Sunday-school may be so conducted as to pro- 
mote directly and efficiently every right aim of the 
institution, and at the same time it may secure cer- 
tain important results which cannot be reached by 
the school in its ordinary operations. 

An anniversary should always be of a memorial 
character. It is an occasion for recounting and re- 
cording the mercies of the year. These mercies 
occurring singly, from week to week, fail to make 
the proper impression. When brought together and 
aggregated in the annual report, in the form of sta- 
tistics and of narratives, they stand out in relief, and 
have an emphasis not accorded to them otherwise. 
Even a school that seems to have been languishing 
and feeble will find on reviewing its own history for 
a year, and putting down carefully its own experi- 
ences, that there has been much to be thankful for. 

The anniversary strengthens the hold of the 
school upon the church. It brings many persons 
into sympathy with the work who are never reached 
in any other way. It gives an impetus to the 
school itself, stirring up both scholars and teachers 
to new zeal. It furnishes an occasion for the pastor 
and for other speakers to appeal to scholars and 
teachers on many points of a general character 
which ought not to be neglected. It is a favorable 
season for urging the duties of benevolence, of 
punctuality, of order, of diligent study of God's 



34 8 MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 

word. So far from the anniversary being a sort of 
frolic, I know no better time in the whole year for 
pressing upon the unconverted the duty of repent- 
ance and conversion. I have known serious impres- 
sions often produced by the anniversary exercises, 
and I think, in arranging these exercises, a place 
should always be reserved for this important topic. 
Let the children have music that will gladden and 
please them. Let them be cheered and entertained 
by various little ceremonials connected with the 
annual collections, the distribution of premiums, etc. 
But let there always be at the right moment a few 
plain words of direct counsel and warning on the 
subject of the salvation of their souls. The topic, 
if rightly handled, will be all the more impressive 
on account of the general good feeling which pre- 
vails on anniversary day. 

There are modes of holding Sunday-school cele- 
brations which it is difficult for any sober-minded 
Christian to approve. Sometimes particular chil- 
dren are showed off in a manner that is very injuri- 
ous to themselves and that creates envy and ill-feeling 
in the minds of others. There is at times a levity in 
the proceedings entirely unsuited to the service. 
The exercises, of course, should be of a glad and 
joyous character. Let the children shout their ho- 
sannas, as of old, from hearts alive with love and joy. 
But nothing so really kills this true and holy glad- 
ness of heart as rudeness or levity. 

The most objectionable feature connected with a 



MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 349 

Sunday-school celebration is turning it into a dra- 
matic entertainment. I have never seen a perform- 
ance of this kind, but have heard of such, and I have 
before me a published account of one which I have 
read with sincere sorrow. This celebration did not 
take place in the church, nor on Sunday. Still it 
was a celebration of the Sunday-school, so regarded 
and so called. The exercises consisted almost ex- 
clusively of " performances" by the children. There 
were speeches, dialogues, songs, tableaux, and finally 
a u regular drama," with "actors" dressed in appro- 
priate costume and with scenic display. I give a 
few extracts, and let my readers judge for themselves 
whether a word of caution is not needed : 

" Single pieces, such as ' The Best Use of a Penny,' ' I'll Never Use To- 
bacco,' and 'Willie's Temptation,' by some of the smaller boys of the school, 
were remarkably well delivered for children of their age. The dialogue of ' The 
Two Dimes' contained an instructive moral that all could appreciate, and the 
'Eleventh Commandment,' a dialogue between three of the girls, was as per- 
fectly rendered as anything we have ever seen anywhere. The other exercises 
embraced the recital of The Better Land,' from Mrs. Hemans, recitation of the 
twenty-third Psalm by the whole school, song, ' I Ought to Love my Mother,' by 
three very small girls, whose voices blended in sweet accord, dialogues entitled 
'God is Love,' by two little girls, and ' The Rabbit,' by two boys, presentation 
of gifts by the superintendent to scholars who had, as missionaries in our midst, 
been most successful in bringing new scholars into the Sunday-school, some 
beautiful tableaux representing ' Incidents in the Life of a Boy who had neglected 
the Sunday-school,' and then in contrast with it, ' Incidents in the Life of a Sun- 
day-school Scholar,' from which the moral was easily drawn. ' Faith, Hope and 
Charity,' and the representation of ' Night and Morning,' constituted the most 
perfect and beautiful tableaux we ever remember to have witnessed. Perhaps, 
however, the great piece of the evening was a scenic representation of ' Joseph 
and his Brethren.' It was dramatized from the Scriptures, divided into acts and 
scenes ; the characters were all dressed in Oriental costume and exhibited the 
Oriental styles of salutation and manners, and the effect was to impress this most 
interesting portion of the Scriptures upon the minds of the children in a manner 
they can never forget. We were first introduced to the old patriarch Jacob as 
30 



35° MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 

he is sending his sons to Egypt to buy food ; next we are in Joseph's palace, 
and the sons before him, unconscious in whose presence they stand; then the 
sons in prison, and the entry of Joseph and his permission to all of them to re- 
turn to Canaan except Simeon ; their return and story to Jacob ; their second 
visit to Egypt, with all the incidents ; the discovery of Joseph to his brethren 
and their final return and account of it to Jacob. We are not extravagant in 
saying that but few persons of any age could have rendered these parts better 
than the boys of this Sunday-school, and the whole performance certainly re- 
flected great credit upon those who had the management of it in charge." 

As to the season of the year for holding the an- 
niversary, schools differ according to the customs 
prevailing in each congregation ; but the majority of 
schools have their anniversary in the spring or early 
summer. 

There is, of course, no absolute rule as to the best 
part of the day for holding the anniversary. I ob- 
ject, however, most decidedly to having it at night. 
In most congregations the afternoon is found most 
convenient. Whatever part of the day is taken, the 
anniversary should take the place of one regular ser- 
vice. To have preaching morning and night, and 
the anniversary in the afternoon in addition, is wea- 
risome and unprofitable to teachers and scholars, who 
constitute no inconsiderable part of the congregation, 
and it for the same reason prevents the other part of 
the congregation from attending the anniversary. 
The anniversary exercises occupy the full time of an 
ordinary regular service of the sanctuary, and it 
ought to be understood that they take the place of 
such a service and that all the congregation are ex- 
pected to attend. 

It is well for the pastor, in the regular service for 



MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 351 

that day, to preach on the subject. There are many 
points connected with the religious training of the 
young on which the pastor desires to address his peo- 
ple, and the anniversary Sunday furnishes a suitable 
occasion for the purpose. Knowing that such a ser- 
mon will be expected of him has its effect on the pas- 
tor's own mind, keeping him in fuller communication 
with the operations and the necessities of the school. 
The preaching of such a sermon on the day of the 
celebration marks the day out with greater distinct- 
ness in the Sunday-school calendar, and makes the 
occasion in all respects more imposing and signif- 
icant in the minds of the young. 

The superintendent should present a short but 
carefully-prepared report containing a business-like 
statement of the condition and history of the school 
for the past year and its wants and prospects for the 
year to come. This report should consist mainly of 
facts, giving accurate statistics of attendance, of be- 
nevolent operations, of the library, of the teachers* 
meetings, and so forth. The report should always 
be in writing and fully written out, not a few written 
memoranda for the superintendent to expatiate on. 

The superintendent's report should be followed by 
an address from the pastor, and that address will nat- 
urally take its tone and topics from the report. The 
facts of the report furnish indeed the points on which 
the pastor will want to talk to his people. 

Some schools make a point of securing for the 
anniversary speakers from abroad. It is a mistake. 



35 2 MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 

These gentlemen who thus go about making speeches 
say many good things, doubtless, and give an extra 
brilliancy and glitter to the occasion, but this very 
extra brilliancy and glitter only make the regular 
routine of the school more tame and humdrum. 
Whatever speeches are to be made let them be made, 
so far as possible, by persons connected with the con- 
gregation. There is hardly any congregation which 
does not contain some gentlemen capable of perform- 
ing such a service if they are properly set in motion, 
and the very fact of a gentleman's thus addressing the 
school makes him more interested in it ever after- 
ward. 

Two speakers are enough, one to the scholars and 
one to the teachers, and neither speech should in any 
case exceed ten minutes. While it is well to have 
the speeches enlivened with anecdote and illustration, 
let them never degenerate into buffoonery or into 
mere story-telling. Scholars are willing enough to 
be amused, and are very prompt to laugh at any tol- 
erable joke that is offered, but they know at the 
same time that they come to the school for no such 
purpose, and they will give respectful attention to 
any stranger who gives them plain, brief, well-con- 
sidered counsels concerning the best means of im- 
proving their advantages as scholars. 

The anniversary will be a dull affair without some 
good singing. By this I do not mean that the choir 
should get up some high-wrought, artistic music. 
The music wanted for the anniversary is Sunday- 



MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 353 

school music — whole-souled, sweet-voiced singing 
by the entire school. Five or six pieces are needed 
of an animated sort, and the school should be well 
and thoroughly drilled on them for some weeks in 
advance. 

There should be a printed programme of the exer- 
cises to be distributed among the audience as well as 
in the school, and the hymns to be sung should be 
printed on the programme, so that all may join in 
the singing. 

It is customary in many schools to give Bibles, 
Testaments, hymn-books, and other rewards of this 
kind to pupils who have recited the catechism or 
certain portions of Scripture, or have been specially 
meritorious in other respects. Sometimes a book or 
other present is given to every scholar who is a reg- 
ular member of the school. This whole matter of 
making presents to the children, besides the heavy 
expense it occasions, has other serious drawbacks, 
and needs extreme caution. Kindness, good will, 
liberality, shown to the children, are all very well ; 
but let us do nothing that looks like bribing them to \ 
attend. A gift is not the only way to the heart of a 
child. The distribution of presents is not the only 
way of making the anniversary interesting and pleas- 
ant to the children ; on the contrary, it often pro- 
duces heart-burnings, jealousies and discontent. A 
pretty certificate of membership or of attendance, 
neatly printed in colors and awarded publicly to all 
who during the year have complied with the condi- 
30* X 



354 MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 

tions, is inexpensive, and forms an agreeable item in 
the proceedings of the anniversary. Bibles, Testa- 
ments, etc., awarded in a like way to all who have 
accomplished certain required studies of the school, 
form another item to which there can be no reason- 
able objection, but beyond this there is need of very 
great caution. Greater latitude of course is proper 
in mission schools than in church schools. 

Shall there be in the anniversary any performances 
by the children ? 

Why not? Is not child-nature the same on Sun- 
day that it is on other days? I would not get up 
dialogues and debates and declamations as in the 
weekday exhibition. But there are certain things 
which can be done by the children at the anniversary 
that will be perfectly in keeping with the occasion, 
and that will add greatly to the interest. Suppose 
thirty young girls, say about ten years old, rise in a 
semicircle on the platform in front and repeat in per- 
fect concert the twenty-third Psalm, not missing a 
w r ord, and as many boys immediately thereafter re- 
peat in the same way the Beatitudes. The whole 
performance occupies less than five minutes, yet it 
has given to those sixty performers and to their five 
times sixty friends in the congregation a lively interest 
in the occasion ; besides that, the preparation for it 
has engraved indelibly on their minds a precious 
portion of God's word. 

But I have not the space to enlarge. Suffice it to 
say that in my opinion recitations of portions of 



MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 355 

Scripture and of hymns by the scholars, either singly 
or in groups, form a valuable part of the proceedings 
of the anniversary, and just that part that will most 
surely bring out a full house. 

In seating the children for the anniversary always 
put the smaller children in front, near the pulpit. 
See that the pews occupied by the young children 
are supplied with high benches on which their feet 
may rest. Nothing is more common than for the 
exercises to be disturbed by a continual knocking of 
little heels against the seat of the pew, and the su- 
perintendent gets up and berates the children for 
"kicking" and "making a noise," whereas the noise 
is no fault of theirs. The pew seats are made to suit 
grown people, and when little shavers five or six 
years old sit in them, their legs hang dangling in the 
air in a manner that is painful to them, and that ne- 
cessarily leads to the distracting noise spoken of. 

4. Closing Schools in Winter. 

The Sunday-school is subject to two evils, of a 
kind exactly the opposite of each other, yet alike in 
their pernicious effects. City schools are very gener- 
ally closed for a couple of months in midsummer, 
country schools for a like, sometimes even for a 
longer, period in winter. This latter practice is not 
perhaps as general as the other. But where it does 
prevail, the habit is usually inveterate, and it re- 
quires no little resolution and energy to break it up. 
In many neighborhoods in the country, it is assumed 



35 6 MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 

as a thing certain, and not to be called in question, 
that the Sunday-school cannot be maintained in 
winter. The people would as soon expect to raise 
a crop of corn or of peaches in winter as to keep 
the Sunday-school open. They expect, as a matter 
of course, to close it about the middle of November, 
and not to open it again until spring. 

How this practice originated it is difficult to say. 
Perhaps it was in those old times, which some of us 
can remember, when the churches were not warmed 
in winter, and when consequently there would be 
some practical inconveniences in holding the school. 
This cause, at least, no longer exists. The rooms 
where the school is held may be made as comfort- 
able in winter as at any other season. For that 
matter, indeed, the school-room may be made more 
comfortable in midwinter than in midsummer. It 
may be warmed in the coldest weather, but it can- 
not always be cooled in the heats of July. 

Will not the teachers and superintendents and 
other Christian people, in those districts where this 
periodical Sunday-school hibernation takes place, 
give the subject a respectful reconsideration? Is 
there any valid reason why the schools should be thus 
closed for three or four months in the year? The 
church is not closed in winter, why should the school 
be ? The weekday-school is not closed, why close the 
Sunday-school ? The children can go out to skate, 
and ride down hill, and build snow-forts, from Mon- 
day to Saturday ; how is it that they become all at 



MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 357 

once so delicate and tender on Sunday morning? 
Winter in the country is the season above all others 
when social gatherings of all kinds are opportune 
and rife ; why should the w T eekly gathering of the 
children in their loved Sunday-school be the only 
exception ? 

There are weighty reasons, physiological, social 
and domestic, why a country Sunday-school should 
be maintained in winter more than in any other sea- 
son of the year. In the long winter evenings in the 
country there is more leisure for study and for pre- 
paring lessons than at other times. The teachers 
of country Sunday-schools have then more time 
upon their hands, particularly the male teachers, and 
can with less sacrifice of business engagements pre- 
pare themselves for their Sunday duties. Farmers 
have winter work, it is true, but it is not so pressing 
and imperious in its demands as the work of " seed- 
time and harvest."' Then there is no time when 
mental operations are so vigorous, when the busi- 
ness of learning and teaching can be conducted with 
so much effect, as in the crisp, frosty days of winter. 
The cold is a mighty tonic both to the mind and the 
body. 

So well is this physiological fact understood that 
all institutions of learning the world over have 
their main season of study in the winter. Is there 
anything in religious truth that should make its 
study particularly suitable to the sultry and relaxing 
heats of July and August? Why should the chil- 



35 8 MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 

dren of this world be more wise in such matters 
than the children of light? 

One thing which gives the argument special point 
is that in very many country districts the Sunday- 
school is kept in the same building in which the 
weekday-school is kept — that is, in the district school- 
house. If, in any of these districts, the common 
school is not kept up all the year round, the time 
selected for keeping it is always the winter, as being 
the best season for school purposes ; and the strange 
anomaly is often seen of the school-house being open 
all the rest of the week for the weekday-school, but 
closed on the Sabbath because then it is too cold for 
the children — those children, too, being the very 
same boys and girls who have been going there all 
the rest of the week ! 

When a custom like this has long prevailed in a 
neighborhood, there is always a certain amount of 
vis inertice to be overcome before a change can be 
brought about. But it will yield, nevertheless, to 
persistent pressure. All that it requires in any par- 
ticular case is one resolute mind. Let there be but 
one teacher who will make up his mind to go right 
on with his own class through the winter, whether 
others do or not, and he will be surprised to see how 
many, both of teachers and scholars, will follow his 
example. 

If these paragraphs meet the eye of any teacher so 
circumstanced, I hope that he will not dismiss the 
subject lightly, but that he will weigh well the re- 



MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 359 

sponsibility of continuing a practice so entirely un- 
reasonable and so fraught with evil. 

5. Closing' Schools in Summer. 

Midsummer is a hard time of the year for city 
superintendents. From the first of June the exodus 
of teachers begins, and by the first of August less 
than one-half of the regular corps of laborers are to 
be found at their posts. In many large city schools 
more than three-fourths of the most efficient teachers 
are absent from the city from one to three months in 
midsummer. I do not blame them for going. The 
strain upon the vital energies, caused by the present 
methods of city life, makes this annual period of 
relaxation an imperative necessity to such people as 
constitute the mass of our Sunday-school laborers. 
They have no choice but to get this annual relief, 
or to abridge, if not abruptly to terminate, their ac- 
tive usefulness. But this does not make the case 
any the easier to the superintendent. The great 
mass of the children, particularly in schools which 
partake at all of a missionary character, remain in 
the city. They are on his hands to be cared for, and 
the burden is not light. It is not an infrequent ex- 
perience for a city superintendent, in midsummer, to 
meet in his school- room from two to three hundred 
children, and not more than half a dozen of his 
regular teachers. I have myself, on occasion, had 
two hundred children on my hands, and not one 
regular teacher, the few laborers who were present 



360 MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 

to help, being special aids picked up for the day 
wherever they could be found. Such a state of 
things needs remedy, if it can be had. 

Many superintendents, in view of the difficulties 
of the case, suspend their schools entirely during 
July and August. Some schools are suspended for 
a period of three months. This shifts the difficulty 
without removing it. The real difficulty is that 
nine-tenths of those children who most need the re- 
ligious instruction of the Sunday-school do not 
leave the city. During the time that the school is 
disbanded they mostly wander about the streets, un- 
learning the good they have received, and receiving 
on the other hand lessons in irreligion, Sabbath- 
breaking and vice ; and when the time for reopen- 
ing the school has come, it requires several weeks 
of industrious visitation on the part of the teachers 
to reclaim all these youthful stragglers and bring 
them once more into orderly habits and regular at- 
tendance. A school that is disbanded in the close 
of June will not be brought to full working order 
before October. One-fourth of the year is lost. 
More than this : the cultivator finds that there has 
been in the mean while a rank growth of weeds 
which it will require time and toil to extirpate. The 
garden is not found as it was left. The fences are out 
of repair. The evil seed always present in the soil 
has grown apace. The good seed unprotected has 
been choked. 

I do not advise, therefore, the closing of our city 



MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 3 61 

schools in midsummer. There are, indeed, evils 
attending the keeping of them together. But the 
evils of suspending the schools are still greater. 
Let superintendents then keep up their organization 
all the year round, if possible, and meet the exigen- 
cies of the summer season in the best way they 
can. 

Where nothing better can be done, the exercises 
of the school may be changed. The regular studies 
may be suspended until the return of the regular 
teachers, and a course of special studies and exer- 
cises be introduced. More of the time than usual 
may be occupied in addresses and instructions to the 
whole school from the superintendent's desk. The 
temporary teachers, so called, are often quite incom- 
petent to give instruction. But they can keep the 
classes together and keep them in order while the 
superintendent, or some one from his desk equally 
competent, addresses the whole school. There are 
many special topics that are never devoid of interest 
which may well occupy the attention of the school 
on such occasions. The evils of drunkenness, of 
swearing, of Sabbath-breaking, may be dwelt upon, 
the person who addresses the school having prepared 
himself with instructive and interesting facts suitable 
to the character of his audience. Another fruitful 
topic for instruction on such occasions is the work 
of Christian missions. Often a foreign missionary 
may be present, and a narrative by him of w T hat he 
has seen among the heathen will greatly interest the 
31 



362 MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 

children. Where a missionary is not to be had, 
suitable reading and preparation on the part of the 
superintendent or speaker will enable him to gather 
facts in regard to the missionary work that will be 
equally valuable. But besides missionary addresses 
and addresses on other special subjects, the Bible is 
full of topics. A parable may be expounded. The 
biography of some Bible hero may be sketched. If 
the superintendent has no particular skill in such ad- 
dresses, he might read a portion of one of those ad- 
mirable children's sermons that have been prepared 
by Dr. Newton, Dr. Todd and others. 

A part of the Sunday-school machinery that should 
be kept specially active in the summer months is the 
library. Some schools take this occasion to close 
the library. There could hardly be a greater mis- 
take. Doubtless there will be during this interval 
some irregularities and some loss of books. But re- 
member, it is not the main object of the library to 
preserve the books, as some librarians seem to think, 
but to do with them the greatest amount of good. 
I would not discourage a faithful librarian in his 
efforts to lessen the loss and waste of books that take 
place. But in the summer-time, when the regular 
teachers are absent and the ordinary course of in- 
struction is very much interrupted, the use of the 
library is needed more than at any other season to 
supplement the teaching and to keep the school to- 
gether ; and if the keeping of the library open during 
this season of general irregularity does occasion the 



MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 3 6 3 

loss of a few volumes, the end is important enough 
to justify the expenditure. 

What is true of books is equally true of Sunday- 
school papers. During the summer months, if dur- 
ing no other season of the year, the superintendent 
should be prepared every Sunday to give each scholar 
an attractive paper. Most of these papers are pub- 
lished only monthly. But there are now so many of 
them that there need be no difficulty in having one 
for each week. He might give them, for instance, 
the Child at Home on the first Sunday in the month, 
the Child's Paper on the second, the Child's World 
on the third, and so on. Some schools do thus sup- 
ply their children with a paper every week all the 
year round ; ordinarily, however, a paper is distrib- 
uted only once a month. What I now urge is that 
during the two or three months of summer when 
the regular course of study is so much interrupted 
the superintendent should make arrangements to 
distribute a paper every Sunday. 

The burden of providing temporary teachers for 
the summer season should not be thrown upon the 
superintendent. On this subject there is a degree of 
thoughtlessness and inconsideration on the part of 
teachers that is perfectly amazing. I have never 
been disposed to censure teachers for leaving the city 
during the hot months where their circumstances 
enabled them to do so, but to go away for two or 
three months without giving any thought what in 
the mean time is to become of their classes is, I think, 



3^4 MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 

to be guilty of a great sin. There always remain in 
the city adult members of the church enough to sup- 
ply all the classes temporarily with teachers. These 
persons are not, perhaps, thoroughly competent ; we 
would not choose them for regular teachers ; but they 
are better than none. Some of them have engage- 
ments or physical infirmities that prevent them en- 
gaging as teachers all the year round, but they can 
safely engage for a few weeks. Now, to hunt up 
such persons and secure their services and make all 
the necessary arrangements and explanations re- 
quire time and labor, but this time and labor each 
teacher should religiously give. It should be a part 
of his regular preparation for leaving town. Each 
teacher, having only his own class to provide for, may 
without difficulty do it. But when it is all thrown 
upon the superintendent, and he alone has to furnish 
substitutes for twenty-five or thirty teachers, it be- 
comes a labor of Hercules. The teacher, in making 
provision for his or her class, should of course con- 
fer with the superintendent ; but this is very differ- 
ent from throwing upon him the whole burden of 
the arrangement. The teacher who leaves the city 
for the summer without having fairly tried to provide 
a substitute is just as guilty as the physician who 
without notice should leave a patient dangerously ill 
and go off to Long Branch or Saratoga. The charge 
of souls is not the less a serious responsibility because 
no pecuniary reward is involved in its observance or 
neglect. 



MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS 365 

6. After Vacation. 

A large number of Sunday-schools, particularly 
those in cities, are virtually disbanded in midsummer. 
The teachers and many of the scholars leave town 
for recreation and health, and the classes are depleted 
and disorganized where not actually disbanded. 
When the first of September comes, few schools in 
our large cities are to be found in active operation. 
I am not going to argue the question now whether 
or not this is a bad state of things and one admitting 
a remedy, but taking the fact as I find it, I wish to 
address a word of exhortation to superintendents and 
teachers. 

This is the season for a fresh, vigorous, decided 
effort. You have come back to your homes strength- 
ened and rested. Quite possibly in your summer 
rambles or reading you have met with books or peo- 
ple that have given you new ideas in regard to your 
work ; you have seen and heard many things likely 
to interest your scholars ; your mind is full, your 
pulse beats healthily ; your scholars, whether they 
have remained at home or whether like yourself they 
have been travelling, are all just in that condition in 
which they will be glad to resume their old places 
and studies in school. Do not make the mistake of 
many, and let these genial influences all die out. Do 
not leave matters to readjust themselves gradually 
and slowly in the course' of the autumn, but make a 
bold, prompt push the very first week you return to 
31* 



366 MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 

the city. You will find it operating powerfully in 
favor of your class and your school. Scholars who 
are neglected at such a season by the teachers of 
their own schools stray off into other schools that 
are more active, or stray off from school altogether. 
A superintendent or a teacher who is in his place by 
the first of September should not be content to let 
matters drift on easily and composedly until the first 
of October. Determine to have a full school at once. 
Let every teacher the very first week of his return to 
town visit every scholar on his roll ; it is an excellent 
way -of beginning the fall campaign. A thorough 
general visitation on the part of all our teachers on the 
first week of September would in many cases double 
the results of the year's work. Many a school, many 
a class, instead of continuing to be a drag for months, 
would start out with full, fresh energies from the 
first. 

Nor should teachers confine their visits and inqui- 
ries to their own scholars. During the summer 
many changes have occurred. Other families have 
come into the neighborhood. The season is one 
especially favorable for getting new recruits. There 
are few schools that might not add fifty per cent 
to their numbers if on the first week of September 
their entire corps of teachers would sally out, and 
while calling on all their own scholars make inqui- 
ries as they went for new ones. Is it not worth a 
trial? If concerted action in any particular case 
cannot be obtained, let each one try the experiment 



MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 367 

individually. Let each teacher for himself deter- 
mine to signalize the first week of his return to town 
by calling on every scholar of his class, and by a 
bold, resolute effort to win new recruits. How pleas- 
ant, how refreshing, to enter your school-room the 
first Sunday after your return and see your own little 
circle of bright faces all complete, besides a goodly 
outside circle of new-comers drawn within the pre- 
cious place by your own kindly influence and solicit- 
ations ! Could you in any way make a more suit- 
able return for the goodness and the gracious protec- 
tion which you have experienced during the late 
season of repose and recreation ? 

The most beautiful natural phenomenon that I ever 
witnessed was seen one summer afternoon at the 
Profile House, among the White Mountains of New 
Hampshire. It was a rainbow stretching across in 
front of that perpendicular wall of rock which stands 
directly before the hotel. The huge background of 
rock brought the rainbow so near to the spectators 
at the hotel that we could see the separate drops of 
rain as they glittered, millions of sparkling diamonds, 
softly descending through a mist of radiant gold. 
Not only was every color of the rainbow marked 
with a distinctness and perfection of which the spec- 
tators had before never witnessed any parallel, but 
the bow itself was complete through its entire semi- 
circle, without a break or a faintness even, from end 
to end. More than this* The reflected or secondary 
bow seen outside the other, though not so brilliant as 



36S MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 

the primary phenomenon, was yet equally full and 
complete in its every part. 

Not less beautiful than this crown and glory of Na- 
ture's loveliness will be that Sunday-school class 
which on its first reassembling in September shall 
present to the eye of its teacher and its superintend- 
ent a circle equally complete, with at the same time 
its full-orbed complement of new recruits standing 
round the inner circle as a halo of reflected but ever 
growing glory. Who will show such a phenome- 
non in his school on the first Sunday after his next 
vacation ? Will you ? 

7. New Scholars. 

The Sunday-school is often called a garden. The 
comparison is as suggestive as it is beautiful. No- 
tice the care bestowed by a skilful gardener upon a 
plant that has just been taken from some other soil 
and replanted in his garden. How particular he is 
to see that the ground where he places it is properly 
prepared and just of the right kind ; that every little 
rootlet and fibre shall come into contact with some 
portion of warm, nourishing earth ; that the soil shall 
be loosened deep enough and wide enough to allow 
and invite the roots to send out their taps freely in 
whatever direction the nature of the plant inclines it 
to grow ! How promptly he removes from the neigh- 
borhood of the young stranger any weeds or plants 
that may be likely to hinder its growth and prevent 
its forming a strong and healthy attachment to the 



MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 369 

soil ! With what watchfulness he sees the first indi- 
cations of sickliness or drooping, watering it in 
drought and giving it his daily care and attention, 
until its every leaf and limb shows that it has firm 
possession of the soil ! 

With equal care should the teacher and superin- 
tendent watch and nurture the child just transplanted 
into the Sunday-school garden. The new scholar 
requires for a time twice or three times the attention 
given to the others. The superintendent in the first 
place should see to it that the child is placed in the 
class best suited to its wants. The gardener would 
not plant a rose in the same position in which he 
would put an ivy. The different classes in school 
are so many garden-beds, each suited by the varying 
circumstances of sun and shade, light, heat and ex- 
posure, for a particular kind of plant. When the 
gardener receives from abroad some new and curious 
specimen, he does not at once set it out into the first 
vacant piece of ground he finds, but he sets himself 
to work to study the nature of the plant, makes him- 
self acquainted with its habits and wants, and then 
places it intelligently where it will be most likely to 
thrive. It is no sufficient reason for the superintend- 
ent to place the new-comer into Miss Smith's class 
that Miss Smith's class is nearly empty and there is 
plenty of room for him there. The first duty that 
the superintendent owes to the new scholar is to get 
acquainted with him, to find out something about 
him, before selecting for him. his school companion- 

Y 



37° MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 

ship and his caretaker. The opportunities which 
the superintendent has for making this acquaintance- 
ship are few. But that is only a stronger reason 
why he should use more carefully the opportunities 
which he has. In a well-ordered school, when a 
scholar is registered, questions are asked as to his 
age, residence, the name and occupation of his pa- 
rents, and so forth. All these items help the super- 
intendent who is wide awake in forming an estimate 
as to the social circumstances which surround the 
child. He learns the nature of the soil from which 
the plant has been taken. A new scholar is usually 
introduced by some teacher or Sunday-school worker 
who has found him and visited him at his home, or 
perhaps by some one of the other scholars. The su- 
perintendent should not fail in such case — which is 
almost every case — to exhaust this additional source 
of information. He may thus usually learn all about 
the external relations and condition of the child. 
Before placing a new pupil into a class the superin- 
tendent needs to know something of his mental ca- 
pacity and attainments ; he must, therefore, make 
an examination more or less formal. In nothing is 
there greater room for tact and skill than in this. At 
the idea of being examined on admission to a Sun- 
day-school a proud child becomes restive, a sensitive 
child shy and embarrassed, one, overgrown and awk- 
ward very likely revolts or is sullen. The superin- 
tendent must know how to examine without any ap- 
pearance of an examination. He gets the child to 



MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 37 1 

read a little, and has a little conversation about what 
is read or about any topic that may be suggested, he 
all the while gauging the child's mind. Thus, by 
one means and another, the superintendent endeav- 
ors to find out where to place the new pupil so that 
he will be under influences most congenial and most 
suited to his particular case. 

The proper placing of new scholars on their ad- 
mission into school is one of the most difficult, as it 
is one of the most important, functions of the superin- 
tendent's office. Yet I have seen superintendents 
of no mean ability in other respects who in this 
matter were utterly deficient, who on receiving a 
new pupil seemed to think their only business was 
to fill up certain classes that had become small and 
weak ; and I have not been surprised in such cases 
to notice that, however great the number of new re- 
cruits, the school never seemed to make any perma- 
nent growth. I have known schools in which there 
was an average of four or five new scholars every 
Sunday, and yet at the end of the season the general 
attendance was no greater than at the beginning. It 
was pouring water into a sieve. The new plants 
had been put into uncongenial soil, and after a brief 
and sickly growth had died out. Such is the his- 
tory of a great deal of the missionary work that is 
done to extend the benefits of the Sunday-school. 

Having selected a class and a teacher according 
to the best judgment he could form of the case, the 
superintendent should then in all cases communi- 



37 2 MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 

cate privately to the teacher all the information 
obtained in regard to the child. Without this 
knowledge the teacher may make mistakes still 
more mischievous than those of the superintendent. 
In acting upon this knowledge, and in attempting to 
get upon a more intimate and confidential footing 
with the stranger, the teacher should not rush upon 
him with sudden and overpowering attention, as is 
the manner of some. A child is to be approached 
very much as you would approach a horse — quietly, 
and by giving it opportunity for observation. Of 
course you will speak to the child when introduced, 
and show him some little civility. But to press your 
attentions upon him so as to make him the con- 
tinued centre of observation is embarrassing, and 
leads him to be reserved. Better let the exercises 
of the class run on in their accustomed course until 
the scene becomes familiar to him and he begins to 
feel a little at home, and to feel an interest in what 
is going on, before you question him much person- 
ally. A moment's conversation with him at the 
close of the school, after the other scholars are dis- 
missed, will often be of service. Nothing is of so 
much importance, however, in setting the teacher 
upon a right footing with a new scholar, as visiting 
him at his own home. This visit should be made 
by the teacher the very first week, if possible, after 
a child is introduced. Such a visit is an act of kind- 
ness that is always appreciated. It places you at 
once in your right relation to him as a friend and 



MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 373 

acquaintance, and enables you in the class to accom- 
modate yourself to whatever is peculiar in him. 

Children are more influenced by each other than 
they are by their teachers or those much older than 
themselves. The companionship selected for the 
new scholar is therefore a most important item. It 
is in fact the soil into which the new plant is set. 
If it has been wisely chosen and the classmates 
among whom he is placed are congenial, he will not 
find much difficulty in getting acquainted. Yet 
even here, so important is this matter, the teacher 
should not leave it to chance. Let him see to it that 
the little stranger ceases from the very first day to be 
a stranger. The teacher who has any tact at all 
will find opportunity, before the hour is over, to 
make him acquainted with some of his young com- 
panions, and will select for the purpose those that 
will be likely to make the most agreeable impres- 
sion. It is very chilling to a young heart, on the 
first day of one's admission to a large school, to 
walk home alone. Some teachers perhaps may 
think these things of small importance, unworthy of 
such grave consideration. If so, I have only to say, 
their experience has been very different from mine. 
The impression made upon the mind of a child on 
first entering a Sunday-school often determines the 
question of his return to it. It should be the study 
of all concerned — superintendent, teacher and class- 
mates — to make him feel that it is a pleasant place, 
where he will find friends and meet with kindness, 
32 



374 MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 

and where hearts are beating in sympathy with 
his own. 

Care, in short, in the treatment of new scholars is 
quite as important as zeal in hunting them up. 

8. Absenteeism. 

It is necessary that some distinct provision should 
be made in relation to the absence of scholars. Ab- 
senteeism, or irregularity of attendance, is the weak 
point in the Sunday-school system. It is impossible 
that a scholar should be making any distinct prog- 
ress in religious knowledge, or gaining substantial 
benefit of any kind, so long as he comes or stays 
away, according to the caprice of the hour. Such 
scholars get no good themselves, and they hurt the 
cause by giving occasion to opponents to say, " See 
how little comes of your Sunday-school labors I" 
Now, in my opinion, this absenteeism may in a 
great measure be cured. But to this end the teach- 
ers must take hold of the matter resolutely. Let 
them have the courage to resolve that in every case, 
without exception, where a scholar is absent, he 
shall be visited by some one during the coming 
week. If his own teacher is so situated as to be un- 
able to make this visit, let it be done by some one 
else. But in all cases and at all risks the visit must 
be made. 

This brings up the next point to which I would 
advert, and that is the necessity of teachers visiting 
their scholars. On this point, I think, there is a 



MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 375 

misapprehension in the minds of some conscientious 
and most excellent teachers. I have known several 
instances of such teachers, who really desired to dis- 
charge this duty, and had no disposition to shrink 
from the labor involved in it, but were deterred 
solely by a mistaken view of what was really re- 
quired. If any pious Sunday-school teacher has the 
gifts and the experience necessary to visit the home 
of a scholar in such a way as to make it a direct 
means of spiritual counsel and edification to the 
household, if he has the gift and the prompting of 
heart, while visiting a member of his class, es- 
pecially if it be in a home where God is not honored 
by the heads of the family, to lift up his voice in 
prayer, to read to the assembled household God's 
holy word, and to give to the family, or to any mem- 
ber of it, spiritual exhortation and advice, — I bid him 
Godspeed. May we all see the day when we can 
do this wisely and profitably ! But there is much 
visiting that is content with a lowlier aim than this, 
and is at the same time exceedingly useful. Go to 
the homes of your children, if for nothing else, that 
you may see where they live, and how they live, and 
the influences around them — that you may become 
acquainted with their families, and make them feel 
that you have some interest in their welfare. Fear 
not that you will be regarded as an intruder. I 
know the heart of the parent, and I know that noth- 
ing sooner gladdens a father or a mother than the 
face of one who has the charge of their child. Go 



37 6 MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 

then with the assurance of a welcome. Go, too, ex- 
pecting to learn something valuable yourself. When 
you return from a friendly conference with one of 
your scholars at his own home and with his parents 
and family, if there is a right spirit in you, you will 
come away a wiser man or woman than you went. 
You will know better than you ever knew before 
how to gain the attention and the affections of your 
scholar. You will see better than you have ever 
seen before the difficulties that were in your path. 
More than all, you will have broken down the wall 
of partition that existed between you and your 
scholar, and you will have established a bond of 
sympathy that will turn teaching from a drudgery to 
a delight. 

There is one view of this whole subject which 
often presents itself with great force to my own 
mind. If by some special dispensation it could be 
granted to you to see personally the Lord Jesus 
Christ, in his human nature, as he appeared in the 
synagogues of Judea eighteen hundred years ago, 
how attentive you would be to the words which fell 
from his mouth ! If it should appear that he was 
now living upon the earth, and that he was desti- 
tute of comfortable apparel, or that by fatigue and 
want of food he was in a suffering condition, how 
glad and honored you would be to minister to his 
personal comfort ! Suppose it could be certainly 
made known to you that he was now to be seen in 
some suburb of the city where you live — that in 



MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. Zll 

some dark upper room, in a remote alley, he lay- 
sick of a fever, and that he had sent to your school a 
message requesting some one to watch with him 
and visit him, and look after his personal wants — 
who would not leap for joy to be entrusted with the 
precious mission? Suppose he were as he was a 
few years after his birth at Bethlehem — a child, a 
poor mechanic's son — and yet it were certainly de- 
clared to you that this poor, obscure child were the 
Lord of Glory dwelling in flesh, humbly and meekly, 
who would not be eager to have that child in his 
class, to visit him weekly, to look after him, to be 
kind to him, to clothe him if he were naked, to feed 
him if he were hungry, to exercise toward him all 
that patience and forbearance and love which the 
weakness and dependence of childhood require? 

Christian friends, where is our faith? Has not 
Christ expressly taught us that children are the ob- 
jects of his special care, and that kindness to them 
is kindness to him? We wrest the Scriptures from 
their plain and obvious meaning when we explain 
away entirely all literal application of those remark- 
able passages in which he speaks of little children. 
Undoubtedly, we are to love and honor all, of every 
age, who have a childlike and Christian temper. 
But our Saviour loved not merely the childlike, but 
children. So should we. Little children, as such, 
are objects of special regard to our dear Redeemer ; 
and when we minister to the wants of such because 
they are dear to Christ, we minister to him. What 
32* 



37 8 MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 

though the act be no more than giving a cup of 
water, or speaking a kind word ? what though it be 
done in some hidden alley, where no human eye sees 
it, and no human tongue shall ever tell it, yet if it be 
done to please and honor Christ, and to do good to 
an immortal spirit for which he has died, he will 
see and honor the act just as certainly as though it 
had been done to himself personally. Martha and 
Mary and their brother Lazarus were doubtless 
greatly privileged by the visits which our Lord fre- 
quently paid to their lowly dwelling, and the Scrip- 
tures tell us with what assiduity they waited upon 
him, and how Mary, who loved him much, washed 
his feet with her tears and wiped them with the 
hairs of her head. But when we see a pious dis- 
ciple now who has leisure, or cultivation, or an 
abundance of this world's goods, going about noise- 
lessly and assiduously, doing good to all who need, 
out of love to Him who died for them, can we doubt 
that the eye of the great Master is upon such a one 
just as certainly as it was upon Mary? 

Teacher, where is your faith to receive this great 
doctrine? If you really, truly believed that the 
ministrations of mercy, and in some special manner 
the caring for children, were services done to Christ, 
could it be that of the " little ones" belonging to our 
schools we should see so many statedly absent? 
Where are these stray lambs? What account can 
you give of them to the great Shepherd? Whence 
that vacant seat in your form ? Perhaps that scholar 



MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 379 

may be confined to a sick chamber, perhaps he may 
be running the streets, perhaps he may have parents 
that care nothing about religion, and he may be 
staying away from mere indifference, and a friendly 
visit would bring him back within the sympathies 
and the precious influences of the Sunday-school. 
Do you really believe that it is " not the will of our 
heavenly Father that one of these little ones should 
perish, ,, and that what you do to bring them to 
Christ is as truly gratifying to him as were the affec- 
tionate and grateful personal attentions of Martha 
and Mary and Lazarus and John, and will you any 
longer forego such an unspeakable joy and privilege ? 

9. Uniform Lessons. 

Although the minds of most of our active Sunday- 
school workers are now made up in favor of having 
a uniform lesson for the whole school, yet there are 
many schools in which there is still no concert of 
action as to the study of a particular portion of Scrip- 
ture. There are so many arguments in favor of the 
uniform lesson system that it may with great propri- 
ety be urged on all our schools. 

Let us glance at the other system for the sake of 
illustration, or perhaps it might be safe to call it, in 
most instances, a want of system. In the majority 
of cases it is rather from thoughtlessness than from a 
thorough consideration of the merits of the question 
that each class selects its own lesson and studies on 
its own account, instead of acting in concert with the 



380 MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 

rest of the school. It is safe to say that where there 
is a lack of uniformity in the lesson there is a poorer 
style of preparation and a lower grade of teaching 
than where the whole school is at work on the same 
lesson. In the appearance of the school there may 
be little or no difference. There may even be much 
the same apparent interest in the .classes as the 
teacher hears the lesson, but the difference in result 
is apparent at the end of a year's teaching. In the 
school where various lessons are studied at the same 
time, each class is independent of every other class. 
While independence in a general way is exceedingly 
desirable, yet this kind of independence is pernicious. 
In a well-ordered Sunday-school the teachers are 
made to realize that we are " members one of an- 
other." We must all help each other, we must all 
labor for one purpose, and we can help each other 
better, and better labor with a view to a common end, 
if we intelligently and systematically labor at the 
same thing. If of four oarsmen in a row-boat each 
pulls his oar at such time and in such manner as best 
suits himself, the vessel is likely to be jerked in vari- 
ous directions and with a result anything but conve- 
nient or profitable ; but when all pull together, their 
labors being directed, too, by the man at the helm, 
the course is straight onward, and the result is just 
w r hat was aimed at. 

Pursuing the independent plan, there is little op- 
portunity for a teachers' study meeting. True, the 
teachers may meet for prayer, or they may hold busi- 



MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 381 

ness meetings. They may, for the sake of holding 
meetings, make frequent amendments to the consti- 
tution or additions to the by-laws ; or they may meet 
to hear the report of the. treasurer, or of some com- 
mittee which would give account of the progress it 
has made since the previous meeting ; or the meet- 
ings may be for purely social purposes, or with a 
view to the cultivation of the musical ability of the 
teachers. While it is good to a certain extent for 
teachers to meet occasionally for almost any wise 
end, yet it is the experience of almost all who have 
attended teachers' meetings that no meeting is so 
profitable as that which is held for the diligent and 
prayerful study of the lesson. Too much business 
degenerates into routine and parliamentary formality. 
Too much of mere social gathering turns the teach- 
er's work into profitless festivity. Independently 
studying what each teacher pleases, what shall we 
study at the teachers' meeting? On whose lessons 
shall we prepare ourselves? There is no way of 
meeting the wants of each teacher in this respect, 
no concert of action, no united study, consequently, 
none of that invaluable help which teacher can im- 
part to teacher when those who are studying the 
same passage with a view to the same result are ex- 
changing thoughts and comparing ideas. 

School being opened, the superintendent, instead 
of introducing the teachers' work with a few perti- 
nent remarks as to what the lesson is and where, an- 
nounces, " The school may how go on with the les- 



382 MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 

sons." And when each class has in its individual 
and solitary way plodded through its verses, he brings 
the teaching to an end with a tap or two of the bell, 
gives out a closing hymn, and without a word of 
practical application or enforcement of what has 
been taught, he lets the school go. 

The classes in the school whose teachers are ab- 
sent are put to severe inconvenience. No two teach- 
ers having the same lesson, there is confusion in what 
is taught when a substitute is put in charge of the ab- 
sent teacher's class or when two classes are tempora- 
rily thrown together. As teacher and scholar have 
prepared, or are supposed to have prepared, different 
lessons, there is a want of fitness in the teaching and 
its results which is undesirable. 

When the teaching is over, the lack of a practical 
application from the desk leaves the work pointless 
and incomplete. The nail of truth, if any has been 
driven, has not been clinched, and is likely to drop 
out. 

Now for the other plan — everybody in the school 
bending his mental energy to the consideration of 
the same passage. The teachers' meeting can be 
held regularly and to some purpose — not for the 
ordinary routine of business, but for the better busi- 
ness of hard study and diligent preparation of the 
lesson. Teacher helps teacher- in the most efficient 
way, and the mental, moral and spiritual stimulus 
which each receives from each is a valuable element 
in making the school move along successfully. The 



MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 383 

superintendent or the pastor presiding at the study 
meeting gives direction to the exercise, and becomes 
committed not only to a general interest in the affairs 
of the school, but to a particular and intimate co- 
operation with the details of its work. 

Let us look at the school while in session. The 
teachers, having prepared the lesson together, natu- 
rally feel the bond which springs from having a com- 
munity of thoughts and interests. The superintendent 
is not on duty merely in the capacity of an officer. His 
work is not only to see that the school opens and closes 
at the proper hours and that no unseemly noise is 
made in carrying it on. He can enter into the spirit 
of his labors with a greater zeal and efficiency than if 
his duties are merely the official ones of maintaining 
order and keeping people up to time. He has some 
central idea of the lesson, the keynote thought of it, 
already on the blackboard in the shape of a short, 
pungent text of Scripture, or a motto, to catch the 
eye and to fix the thought as teachers and scholars 
enter the room. He gives out a hymn which, as 
nearly as possible, bears upon the truths taught in 
the lesson. In reading a portion of Scripture he 
does not stumble at random on some chapter which 
has no particular connection with the lesson, but 
selects either the lesson itself or something w r hich 
helps the school to understand it. He does not start 
the school at the study of the lesson with the barren 
announcement that thetime has come at which that 
exercise may be proceeded with, but helps the lesson 



384 MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 

with a pleasant word or two as to where it is and 
what it is about. 

And now the teachers and their classes proceed 
with the lesson. If a teacher is absent and a substitute 
is in his place, or if two classes are consolidated under 
one teacher, all moves on smoothly. The hour of 
teaching being over, there is room for a little talk 
from the desk. Pastor or superintendent may now 
apply the truth which the teachers have been incul- 
cating. There is no danger of the work being done 
at cross purposes when all have been studying the 
lesson together. The blackboard is brought into 
service, and some of the leading ideas of the lesson 
are chalked upon it. Ten minutes or so may profit- 
ably be spent in this exercise. The closing prayer 
may well add another clincher to the nail of truth 
in asking God's blessing on what has been taught. 
Then, when the teachers and those whom they have 
labored with go home, they go warmed with the 
enthusiasm proceeding from a well taught and har- 
moniously learned lesson. 

I would urge on all who have never adopted the 
uniform lesson system a fair and thorough trial of it. 
If the school has been successful under the other 
plan, depend upon it the success has been in spite 
of the independent system rather than an evidence 
of its excellence, and if there has been an attain- 
ment of successful results without a uniform lesson, 
there is hardly any measure to the success to be 
hoped for when the whole energy of the school is 



MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS, 385 

concentrated in the co-operative work of studying 
one lesson. 

It is just as appropriate to have a uniform lesson 
for one and the same school as to have a uniform 
meal for one and the same family. And what is a 
Sunday-school but a family ? and what is their Sun- 
day's meal but a blessed Sunday's feeding upon the 
Bread of Life ? 

10. How to Start a New School. 

Any earnest Christian whose heart is in the 
work can start a Sunday-school, should his lot be 
cast in a neighborhood where no such school exists. 
There are such neighborhoods scattered all over the 
land and many thousands of Christian hearts earn- 
estly longing to engage in the most blessed work, 
but they know not how to set about it. I propose 
to offer a few plain, practical suggestions on the 
subject. I have in view a destitute neighborhood in 
the country where there is no regular church or- 
ganization and no stated preaching of the gospel. 
In the establishment of a mission-school in the city, 
or of a school within the bounds of an organized 
congregation, the steps would be somewhat different, 
though the spirit and the governing principles would 
be the same. 

1. The first step for any one who would begin 

such a work is to seek guidance and aid from above. 

" Except the Lord build the house, they labor in 

vain that build it." This is true, indeed, of every 

33 Z 



386 MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 

undertaking, but it seems especially applicable to 
such a work as that of the Sunday-school. The 
man or the woman who meditates engaging in such 
an enterprise needs to begin with earnest, importunate 
prayer. Pray to have your own soul baptized anew 
with holy zeal and energy ; pray for special guid- 
ance, that you may be led to adopt the right meas- 
ures and to seek the best co-operation ; pray that the 
Holy Spirit would move the hearts of those whom 
you will need as fellow-laborers in the work ; pray 
that the children whom you wish to bring into the 
school may be inclined to come, and that the parents 
may be inclined to send them, and to co-operate with 
you heartily in your plans ; pray that those who 
have the worldly means needed may have their 
hearts warmed toward the project, so that whatever 
money may be necessary shall be forthcoming as it 
is required. The hearts of all are in your Father's 
hands, and he moveth them whithersoever he will. 
Go to him, then, with the utmost confidence, but 
also with the most importunate and persevering re- 
quest, for help in what you are about to undertake. 
This is your first step. 

2. Make up your mind that you will give cheer- 
fully of your time, strength and worldly means to 
the forwarding of the work. You will not succeed 
unless you enter upon it with a willingness to make 
sacrifices. You must be willing to give up some- 
thing of ease, to make concessions to the wishes and 
the prejudices of others, to be deprived of certain 



MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 387 

hours heretofore given to leisure and quiet retire- 
ment. You must make a fresh, special consecra- 
tion of yourself to the Master's service. 

3. Prepared thus to enter upon the work in a 
right spirit, and with an urgent cry for divine help 
and guidance, seek next for human guidance. Peri- 
odicals are now published devoted to this special 
work of the Sunday-school and containing practical 
hints and suggestions in regard to its management. 
Books have been published for the same purpose, 
such as Pardee's Sabbath- School Index, Eggleston's 
Sunday- School Manual, House's Sunday- School 
Hand-Book, Packard's Teacher Teaching, Hart's 
Thoughts on Sabbath- Schools, etc. Take some one 
or more of these Sunday-school papers and get one 
or more of these volumes, and give some time to 
reading on the subject. If in this reading you do 
not find exactly the directions needed by you in your 
particular case, you will at all events get your heart 
more and more interested, and you cannot fail to 
meet with many suggestive and wise thoughts on the 
general subject. 

4. Before making any public move in the matter 
look around you thoughtfully and see what ma- 
terials for a school exist ; who there are in the 
neighborhood that would be suitable persons, in re- 
spect to age and character, to act as teachers, and 
that would be likely to be willing to engage in the 
service ; what children there are that are of suit- 
able age, and that might probably be induced to at- 



3§8 MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 

tend. Make an inventory of these, putting down 
every one that you can think of, until you feel that 
you can form some reasonable estimate in regard to 
the prospects for a school. Among the preliminary 
subjects of inquiry that should thus occupy your 
mind is the question of a place for holding a school. 
Is there a school-house in the neighborhood ? Could 
it be used for a Sunday-school? If not, what other 
building or room is to be had ? You may not be 
able by yourself to solve all these questions, and you 
should by no means undertake to solve them with- 
out consultation with those who are to be your co- 
workers. But the more carefully and thoughtfully 
you revolve the whole subject in your own mind, 
before asking help and co-operation from others, 
the more ready will you find them to listen to you, 
and the less danger will there be of your falling into 
discouragement when you encounter, as you doubt- 
less will encounter, difficulties and obstructions. 

Having thus laid your case before your heavenly 
Father ; having consecrated yourself to the work by 
some special, private act of voluntary self-devotion ; 
having given time and thought to preparation for it 
by reading some of the books and papers that treat 
of the subject ; and having endeavored to make a 
sober and intelligent estimate of what is to be done, — 
you are now prepared to go forward and make an 
actual beginning. In so proceeding, what is the first 
thing to be done ? What are the specific steps to be 
taken in collecting and organizing a school? 



MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 389 

What is your next step ? 

5. Get together in some way those who are will- 
ing to help as teachers. Who these are you can find 
out only by actual inquiry. You must go and see 
them individually, one by one, and talk the matter 
over. Having found the necessary helpers, get them 
together, and after prayer for divine guidance and 
help in your enterprise have a free conference, lay- 
ing before them all the plans you have to suggest 
and all the information you have gathered, and then 
agree among yourselves upon some plan of proceed- 
ing. In this conference you will obtain much fresh 
information. No matter how well you may suppose 
yourself to be acquainted with the neighborhood, 
you will find that every one knows, in some nook or 
corner, some family that you have overlooked. You 
will also probably receive valuable suggestions. 
Perhaps to your surprise you will find some one who 
in other days and in some other place has been a 
regular Sunday-school worker and knows all about 
how the work is to be done. 

6. Every family should be visited. This part of 
the work should be divided among you at the con- 
ference just spoken of. Make written lists of the 
families assigned to each worker, with the under- 
standing and agreement that the visit shall be made 
within a week, if possible, from the time of the con- 
ference. A certain promptness and simultaneous- 
ness of action in the matter arrests attention and cre- 
ates a stir. This systematic and thorough family 

33* 



39° MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 

visitation is essential to success. No other kind of 
advertising — posting of notices and handbills — will 
answer. You must go from house to house, explain 
what you are going to do, ask the co-operation of 
the parents, and invite every child personally. If 
this part of the work is well done, you cannot fail to 
have a school. 

7. A place for holding the school will have to be 
secured. In most neighborhoods, even in the most 
destitute, there is usually some place where people 
congregate occasionally for the purpose of religious 
worship. Very often it is the district school-house. 
Get whatever place you can that is most central and 
most convenient. In some cases the only opening 
will be in a private house. One of the most success- 
ful schools I ever knew was held in a barn. Make 
a beginning somewhere, in the best place you can 
get. When you are once under way and people be- 
come interested in your work, places now closed 
against you may be opened. 

8. Sunday-schools cost something — not much, in- 
deed, but still something. There is no tuition to 
pay, which is the chief cost of the weekday-school, 
but books and other things are needed, and they 
cannot be obtained without money. Every scholar 
as well as teacher will need a Bible or a Testament. 
Most of the scholars will have Bibles or Testaments 
of their own, and those who have should be told 
when invited to come to the school to bring a Bible 
or Testament with them. For the supply of those 



MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 391 

scholars who are destitute application should be 
made to the nearest depository of the American Bible 
Society, and the books obtained either by donation 
or purchase. After the Bible each scholar will need 
a hymn-book and a question-book or lesson-book of 
some kind. These are now published in great vari- 
ety. The teachers in their preliminary conference 
will have to agree upon the hymn-book or question- 
book to be used, and order a supply to be in readi- 
ness when the school opens. At the same time each 
one should determine to take a teachers' paper at 
his own expense. Scholars should be induced, so 
far as possible, to purchase their own question-books 
and hymn-books. The cost to each will be but little, 
and it is better, as in the case of the Bible, for each 
to have his own. Besides Bibles, hymn-books and 
question-books, the school will need a supply of chil- 
dren's papers, a blackboard, one or more wall maps 
and a library. The cost of these will vary of course 
with the size and the means of the school. But if 
the school is to be made interesting and profitable, 
something considerable must be expended in this 
way. A proper outfit, in addition to the supply of 
Bibles, hymn-books and question-books, will cost not 
less surely than one dollar a scholar, and a like 
amount ought to be expended yearly in replenishing 
the stock. 

Any dealer or publication society that makes a 
specialty of this business will, on application, cheer- 
fully furnish estimates, with lists of books and other 



39 2 MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 

requisites. I give below a sample, such as I would 
recommend for a school of forty scholars : 

I Superintendent's Roll-book 25 

1 Librarian's Record .40 

8 Teacher's Class-books .48 

12 Primers ,48 

I Bible Dictionary $1.50 

1 Pardee's Sabbath-School Index 1.25 

I Map of Palestine 1.50 

1 Blackboard Paper 1.60 

40 Children's Papers, yearly 5.00 

1 Select Library, from 40 to 60 vols 27.54 

$40.00 

The books and other requisites being provided, a 
place of meeting secured, and the scholars and 
teachers assembled, how is the school to be organ- 
ized? What is the next step? 

9. Probably the teachers will have agreed before- 
hand among themselves which of them shall be 
superintendent. If not, they must do so now. A 
leader is the first thing needed, and usually there is 
not much practical difficulty in determining which 
of them it shall be. In most cases the prime mover 
in the matter, the one who first set the enterprise in 
motion, will be the one most suitable for superin- 
tendent. 

10. The superintendent having been designated, 
he will proceed to call the meeting to order. We 
can imagine him addressing the meeting as follows : 
" My friends, we have met to form a school for the 



MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 393 

purpose of studying together God's holy Word on 
this his holy day. We shall not succeed in our 
undertaking unless we have his blessing upon it. 
To this end, then, let us call upon him in prayer." 

1 1 . After a brief prayer by the superintendent, or 
by some one else that he may call upon, he proceeds 
to divide the scholars into classes. This one step 
converts the little assembly from a mere meeting 
into a school. The classification is the first specific 
act of a school organization. In making this classi- 
fication the first thing is to ascertain which of the 
scholars cannot read. These of course will form a 
class or classes by themselves. Next, of those that 
read, some will be found w T ho read very imperfectly, 
having to stop frequently to spell out the hard words. 
These will constitute another class. Of those that 
read fluently there will probably be enough to form 
two or three classes, and these will be sorted ac- 
cording to age, sex, size and general indications of 
intelligence. 

12. The superintendent, before beginning to clas- 
sify, will do well to agree with the teachers which 
kind of scholars shall be assigned to each. Those 
who do not read at all are to be assigned to A ; 
those who read imperfectly, to B ; those who read 
fluently, to C, D, E, etc. He will then proceed to 
call the scholars to him one by one, and by asking 
each one to read a little in the Testament which he 
holds in his hand, and in case the scholar reads 
fluently, by asking him two .or three questions as to 



394 MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 

his studies and his general knowledge, he can de- 
termine pretty soon to which class he ought to belong, 
and can at once send him accordingly to A, B, C, 
D, etc. It will take the superintendent half an hour 
probably to classify in this way a school of forty 
scholars. 

13. While the superintendent is thus engaged in 
examining and classifying the scholars, the teachers 
should employ the time in making themselves ac- 
quainted with the scholars assigned to them. As 
each scholar comes into the class, the teacher should 
make a careful and minute record of his name, resi- 
dence, parents' names, and any other information 
which the scholar may give in regard to himself or 
his family, and of the neighborhood in which he 
lives. These particulars help the teacher wonder- 
fully in his intercourse with the scholars, and they 
should be in such form as to be available to the 
superintendent, secretary and librarian in making 
up the general register and records of the school. 
The half hour spent by the superintendent in the 
classification may be very profitably spent by the 
teachers in making these preliminary inquiries and 
recording the results. 

14. In a school numbering not more than thirty 
or forty scholars the general oversight need not oc- 
cupy much of the superintendent's time. He should 
expect to teach a class, as well as to superintend the 
school, and provision for this should enter into his 
plans in making the classification. 



MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 395 

15. The case is different in regard to the duties of 
librarian and secretary. The office of librarian par- 
ticularly requires a considerable time, even in a small 
school, and unless there is some one who can give to 
the business nearly his whole time during the school- 
hours, the library will not have that efficiency which 
properly belongs to it, and besides, the books w 7 ill 
very rapidly disappear. In a school of the size now 
contemplated, the librarian may, without difficulty, 
discharge the additional duties of secretary. There 
can almost always be found some young man or 
young woman who is not willing to teach, or per- 
haps not fitted to teach, who yet can perform ad- 
mirably the duties of librarian and secretary, and 
who would be gratified in being thus honorably and 
usefully connected with the school. In case no one 
can be found for librarian, one of the teachers should 
undertake the duty, and the superintendent should 
take the duty of secretary. 

16. When the classification has been completed, 
the teachers will severally proceed to instruct their 
classes in whatever lesson has been agreed upon or 
has been assigned by the superintendent. After a 
suitable time spent in this way, the superintendent 
will give a signal for the lessons to cease, and will 
then make a few remarks to the scholars urging 
their punctual attendance and asking their co-opera- 
tion in bringing in other scholars, and also pressing 
upon their attention some of the truths contained in 
the lessons upon which they have been engaged. 



39 6 MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 

The school should close with singing some pretty 
Sunday-school hymn of a kind likely to take with 
the children. If a library and a supply of children's 
papers have been procured, make a distribution of 
these just before dismission. 

17. I have said nothing about a constitution and 
by-laws. In fact, I have not much faith in this kind 
of trumpery. I would not say that no Sunday-school 
should have its constitution and by-laws. Perhaps 
they may be necessary in some places and for some 
people, but oftentimes schools are killed by constitu- 
tion making. A school such as I have described is 
a very simple affair, and the less machinery there is 
about it, the greater ordinarily will be its motive 
power. Instead of meeting to puzzle their brains 
over a constitution, let the teachers meet to warm 
their hearts in earnest prayer for the conversion of 
their scholars. 

11. Are we Making' Progress ? 

The Sunday-school cause is moving ; no one can 
question that. The evidences of activity and of mo- 
tion are too many and too palpable to be ignored or 
denied. 

But all motion is not progress. There is such a 
thing as moving backward, or moving in a circle, 
going round and round, but not going forward. The 
boy's arrow is no swifter than his top. The activity 
of some people is that of the top. They make a 
great fuss, they bustle about and spin around here 



MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 397 

and there and are tremendously busy, but they have 
no well-defined aim, and you find them after a 
twenty years' absence just where you left them. 
Every now and then some new improvement in the 
Sunday-school machinery is brought out, but on ex- 
amination it proves to be only the revival of what 
was in use thirty or forty years ago. Such tilings 
necessarily raise the query whether we really are 
only moving in a circle. Instead of pooh-poohing 
at the question — a method of arguing which often 
silences people without satisfying them — let us for a 
moment look soberly at some of the broad facts in 
the case. 

i. In the first place, thirty years ago the idea still 
lingered in the minds of many good people that the 
Sunday-school was only for the children of the poor. 
Robert Raikes in the Sunday-school and Joseph 
Lancaster in the weekday-school did incidentally this 
great mischief. The controlling idea in the minds 
of both these good men was a scheme for the ameliora- 
tion of the destitute. The idea took such hold of 
the public mind that it required at least two or three 
generations to grow out of it. The idea had not 
yet died out thirty years ago. To-day it is practi- 
cally dead both as regards the Sunday-school and 
the weekday-school. The two have grown side by 
side, and have reciprocally helped each other. There 
is to-day a much sounder public sentiment in regard 
to both than there was a generation back. The 
cases now are exceedingly rare and exceptional of 
34 



39 8 MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 

those who think that either the Sunday-school or 
the common weekday-school is of the nature of a 
charity, like the almshouse, for the exclusive benefit 
of the poor and the vicious. Here, then, is substan- 
tial progress, about which there cannot be much 
question. The community has been educated to a 
more correct theory of the work to be done. 

2. In the second place, the relation of the church 
to the Sunday-school is more clearly defined and 
more generally accepted than it was thirty years ago. 
The change here has not been so complete as in the 
preceding case. There are still those who regard 
the Sunday-school as a sort of outside, independent 
organization, like, for instance, an association for 
preventing cruelty to animals. I do not refer to 
the union of Christians of different name in what are 
properly missionary fields, where no one denomina- 
tion is strong enough by itself to sustain a school. 
In such cases — and they are very numerous, and they 
always will be — God-fearing men, not as Presbyteri- 
ans, Methodists, Episcopalians, Baptists, and so forth, 
but as Christians, come together and unite in gather- 
ing the children of all classes into a school on the 
Sabbath and teach them the great common doctrines 
of salvation. May the day never come when duty 
like this shall become an obsolete idea ! The case 
to which I refer is different from this. It is that 
of the Sunday-school belonging to a particular con- 
gregation or parish. The time was when a few of 
the members of such a congregation — usually of the 



MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 399 

younger portion — formed a coterie by themselves, 
and were regarded as specially constituting the Sun- 
day-school people, the remaining and far larger por- 
tion of the congregation looking on, with approbation 
perhaps, but still only as spectators. If the pulpit 
was to be lowered, the pews to be remodelled or 
cushioned, the church to be painted or repaired, or 
a new minister to be called, it w r as a matter in which 
all had an interest and a voice, but the Sunday-school 
belonged to the teachers. Such was the theory. I 
am sorry to say the idea is not dead, but it is dying. 
In this matter we certainly have made progress, and 
the day, I believe, is not distant when the church 
and congregation as a whole w r ill feel the same in- 
terest and the same sense of obligation in the organ- 
ization, management and support of the Sunday- 
school that they do in the maintenance of public 
worship or in the settlement and support of a pastor. 
3. Perhaps the most marked evidence of growth 
and progress in the Sunday-school work is in the 
multiplication of books, maps, charts, plates and ap- 
paratus of various kinds. There are, as I have 
already observed, hundreds of teachers still living 
who can remember the time when "Anna Ross," 
" Little Henry and his Bearer," and a few other books 
of the same sort, that could almost literally be counted 
on one's fingers, constituted the entire stock of books, 
and a few sheets of red and blue tickets were about 
all the apparatus of the Sunday-school. The writer 
of these paragraphs was himself a pupil in a large 



400 MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 

mission school in which the entire stock of supplies 
of every kind was brought weekly by one of the lady 
teachers in her reticule. There was then no map of 
Palestine, big or little, which could be made available 
for the instruction of a class ; there were no prints, 
colored or uncolored, coarse or fine, by which a 
teacher could illustrate to a class the manners and 
customs of Bible times ; there were no class-books 
or school records ; there were no Sunday-school pa- 
pers either for scholars or teachers ; there were no 
rooms specially fitted and furnished for the use of the 
school, but the sessions were held universally, as in 
many places they are * still held, in the body of the 
church ; there were of course no such things as 
blackboards in the school ; indeed, they were not 
then known to any extent in the weekday-school, and 
their introduction into the Sunday-school hardly dates 
further back than five or six years. In all this — that 
is, in the means and appliances of various kinds for 
making Sunday-school instruction effective and in- 
teresting — we have unquestionably made great pro- 
gress. In some of these things we have perhaps 
gone too fast and too far. We are going into an ex- 
treme, for instance, in the production of library books. 
More new volumes of this kind are now produced in 
a single year than the whole number which were in 
existence a little more than one generation back ; and 
among this vast multitude of religious books for the 
young there is without doubt a large amount of 
which the most favorable opinion that can be ex- 



MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 401 

pressed is that it is trash. But that does not detract 
from the substantial merit of that large number 
of books which are perfectly unexceptionable and 
whose influence upon the minds of the young is good 
and only good. In the means for inculcating Bible 
truth and producing sound religious impressions the 
teacher of the present day has unquestionably advan- 
tages vastly superior to those of the previous genera- 
tion. Only, where the number of these appliances is 
so great — and some of them are of doubtful charac- 
ter — it behooves him now to exercise a degree of 
caution not needed formerly w r hen he had almost 
nothing to choose from, good or bad. 

4. In the fourth place, there has been a great ad- 
vance in the matter of Sunday-school music. In- 
stead of the dolorous, dismal, joy-forbidding strains 
which once dragged their weary length along at the 
opening and closing services of the school, tunes 
have been created better suited to the nature of chil- 
dren. As a consequence this part of the service, in- 
stead of being a solemn bore, to be submitted to with 
as little rebellion as possible, is now the bright spot 
in all the holy day. The children are fairly jubilant 
when the exercise is announced. There is nothing 
ordinarily that gives a mass of children greater pleas- 
ure than singing, when the exercise is properly con- 
ducted, and it was a great advance in the right direc- 
tion when advantage was taken of this source of 
innocent enjoyment to. make it a means of religious 
service and improvement. 

34 * 2 A 



404 MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 

for ourselves. The Sunday-school is the agency 
beyond all others for increasing and developing 
the working talent and the Christian graces of the 
church. 

The utility of the Sunday-school in the matter now- 
suggested is indeed no new idea of the present gen- 
eration. It lies at the corner-stone of the American 
Sunday-School Union, now half a century old. All 
the managers and most of the officers and working 
agents of that society are and always have been lay- 
men, and the doctrine that laymen may wisely be 
employed in the management and prosecution of this 
blessed work, not to the disparagement, but to the 
relief and the assistance, of the ministry, has ever 
been maintained and exemplified by that institution. 
The idea was expressed with great clearness and 
force some years ago in a sermon preached for the 
society by the late Dr. Potts of New York, on " The 
Sunday-school as a Means of Developing the Lay 
Talent of the Church." But this idea, though ad- 
vanced in a previous generation, and maintained 
throughout with an unbroken continuity, has re- 
ceived a large and unwonted development in the 
last twenty years. There never was a time in the 
history of modern Christianity when laymen were 
doing so much as they are now doing in the direct 
work of evangelization, making known the un- 
searchable riches of Christ and bringing others 
under the influence of Christianity, and all this 
mainly through the Sunday-school. In the develop- 



MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 405 

ment of this idea, therefore, there has undoubtedly 
been unmistakable progress. 

.7. One of the most hopeful signs in regard to the 
Sunday-school work is the spirit of restless uneasi- 
ness everywhere manifest in regard to it. We all 
see in this institution capabilities which we have 
hardly begun to realize. We all feel that our schools 
are sadly below the standard to which we are look- 
ing. Look over the columns of any Sunday-school 
teachers' paper for three or four successive num- 
bers and notice the remarks of the various corre- 
spondents and contributors, and see how constant 
the demand is for something higher, something bet- 
ter, than anything we have yet reached in Sunday- 
school attainment. We want better books for our 
libraries ; we want better question-books for our 
classes ; we want Bibles filled with the right kind of 
maps ; we want a better style of music — something 
that shall enable the children not only to sing sweet- 
ly and with a will while in the Sunday-school, but 
to keep on singing when they grow up and form part 
of the great congregation ; we want better school- 
rooms and more efficient and varied means of visible 
illustration — wall maps, charts and blackboards ; we 
want trained teachers, capable of commanding at- 
tention and of making Bible truth plain and attrac- 
tive ; we want parents who really care more for the 
religious training and welfare of their children than 
for their secular education or their advancement in 
worldly condition ; we want a church thoroughly 



406 MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 

alive to the command of her Lord, " Feed my 
lambs ;" we want pastors who can push forward 
and intelligently guide and control this noble move- 
ment — men who know how to take hold of the will- 
ing lay element to be found in every congregation 
and utilize it ; we want more missionary work in 
bringing in the millions who are yet outside of the 
Sunday-school. 

But there is no end to our wants, as there is none 
to our shortcomings. The fact, however, that Chris- 
tians are to some extent alive to these deficiencies is 
among the hopeful signs of the times — more hopeful, 
assuredly, than a spirit of self-complacency or of 
easy indifference. The Sunday-school worker can- 
not better begin each new year than with the earnest 
aspiration after improvement in his work, or, to vary 
the expression, with a spirit of fixed, resolute, hope- 
ful discontent. 




INDEX 



Absenteeism, of scholars, how to be remedied, 374. 

Accommodations for the Sunday-school, 335. 

Affections of a class, how to be gained, 189. 

Age, how far to be considered in classifying scholars, 71. 

Aggressive work, 22 ; Christianity aggressive, 23. 

Aims important, 136 ; aims of the Sunday-school teacher, 138-149. 

Alexander f Dr. Archibald's reading of the Scripture, in; his powers as a 

questioner, 158. 
American Sunday -School TIni on, its importance as a missionary agency, 

31 ; the duty of giving it a liberal support, 31. 
Anniversaries, 346. 

Apparatus for Sunday-schools greatly increased, 400. 
Attendance of scholars should be aimed at by the teachers, 138 ; irregular 

attendance of teachers, 230. 
Attention of a class, how gained, 177-184. 

^Baptists exercise ecclesiastical supervision of Sunday-schools, 315. 

JBell, ringing the bell a bad way of stopping noise, 55 ; never to be used for 
arresting disorder, 83. 

Hible Knowledge, the great means both of conversion and of growth in ho- 
liness, 16 ; the general contents of the Bible to be learned, 226; Bible to be 
read through in concert, 229. 

JBoohs to be closed during recitation, 165 ; teaching out of book, 171-179 ; 
the enormous number of Sunday-school books now published, 273-275 ; 
how to select, 277-291; modes of distributing, 291-310; multiplication of 
Sunday-school books, 399. 

Husy, how to keep scholars busy, 164. 

Card, library, 300. 

Catalogue of library needed, 299. 

Children to be trained and educated in the beliefs of the gospel, 17 ; this 
training to be accomplished in great measure by means of a school, 18; 
more than half the children out of the Sunday-school, 30 ; children's meet- 
ings at Conventions, 256 ; attendance in church, 328. 

407 



408 



INDEX. 



Child's Scripture Question-book, 227. 

Chorister, necessity of having one in the school, 42. 

Christianization, to be accomplished in great measure by education. 17. 

Church, the church bound to indoctrinate the young in Christian knowledge 
and principles, 18 ; an organization for propagating the truth, 25 ; bound to 
be aggressive, 25 ; bound to look after neglected children outside of its pale, 
27 : church court ought to take supervision of this matter, 28 ; has prop- 
erly the control of the Sunday-school, and should appoint and direct the 
superintendent, 35, 36 ; church action not needed in Conventions, 250-252 ; 
relation of church to Sunday-school, 310 ; the church should control the 
Sunday-school, 312-318; attendance of children in church, 328. 

Class teaching, 153-157 ; questioning a class, 157-165 ; keeping class all en- 
gaged, 169 ; how to hold the attention of a class, 177-184. 

Classification to be made by superintendent, 69 ; difficulty of the subject, 70 ; 
rules to be observed, 71-76 ; classifying a new school, 393. 

Comprehension of the scholars, how to reach it, 193. 

Conventions to be attended by teachers, 241 ; State Conventions, 248 ; Coun- 
ty Conventions, 252. 

Conversion of scholars the first aim of the Sunday-school teacher, 14 ; con- 
verts to be built up in holiness, 15 ; winning souls, 128-131 ; aiming at their 
conversion, 147. 

Cost of opening a new school, 391, 392. 

County Conventions, rules for conducting them, 252. 

Deficiencies in the work accomplished, 20. 

Definite lessons should be assigned, 206. 

Denominationalism needed and not needed in the Sunday-school work, 
249-252. 

Devotional service, allotment of time for it, 94-96; of what it should con- 
sist, 96. 

Disorder, wherein it consists, 80. 

Doctrine, scriptural, the means of building up young converts in holiness, 16; 
doctrine of the Sunddy-school to be scriptural, 145. 

Doors to be closed and locked during the opening service, 97. 

Dull scholars not to be overlooked, 144. 

Earnestness needed in reading the Scriptures, no. 

Encouragement to be given to the dull, 224. 

Evangelization by means of Sunday-schools, 16. 

Every scholar to have a share of the teacher's attention, 143. 

Example of prayer, 117, 118. 

Exectitive ability wanted in the superintendent, 54. 

Expulsion as a means of government in Sunday-schools, 90. 



INDEX. 409 

Eyes, how to be used in reading a hymn or a passage, of Scripture publicly, 

107, 114. 
Fast parsing, 182. 

Fitch, his rule about keeping the scholars busy, 184^187. 
Formality in reading the Scriptures, 109. 
Freshness in teaching, 205. 
Fretful, fussy, disqualifications in a superintendent, 54. 

Gardiner, Mary, worthy of imitation, 130. 
Geist's adhesive labels, 303. 

Government to be exercised in Sunday-school, 87. 
Green, Ashbel, anecdotes of him, 119. 
GutJirie, his skill in illustration, 204. 

Help from the Great Teacher, 131-135. 

Hymn, mode of giving it out, 103 ; waiting for the scholars to find it, 103 ; 
care in announcing the right number, 104; grammatical blunders in an- 
nouncing the hymn, 106 ; object of reading the hymn before reading it, 106 ; 
looking at the scholars while reading, 107. 

Idiot child, a remarkable instance, 196. 

Illustrations in teaching should be varied, 204 ; additional illustrations, 207. 

Individual peculiarities, how far to be observed in classifying a school, 76. 

Institutes, County, different from a Convention, 257 ; programmes, 260-264. 

Instruction to be scriptural, 145. 

Intellectual progress, how far to be considered in classifying scholars, 75. 

Irregularity of attendance, 230. 

Knowledge of scholars and teachers and of what is passing in the school im- 
portant to superintendent, 60-63 ; knowledge of the lesson, 64. 

lancaster, Joseph, his mistake, 397. 

last resort in Sunday-school government, 87. 

lateness encouraged by waiting for the laggards, 99. 

lesson, the teacher should aim to secure the study of it by the scholars, 138 ; 
to be studied by the teacher, 180; should be definite, 206; preparation by 
the teacher, 210; lesson to the class, 212; getting the scholars to learn 
the lesson, 221 ; lessons interrupted by the librarians, 296 ; uniform lessons, 

379- 
librarian, his appointment and qualifications, 41 ; his work, 303 ; librarian 

in a small country school, 395. 
library for teachers a necessity, 241 ; Sunday-school library, how to select it, 

273-291 ; how to manage it, 291-309 ; library card, 201 ; library Register, 

306 ; use of library books in the summer, 362. 
35 



41 INDEX. 

Iiove for souls the first qualification of the teacher, 124-127 ; power of love in 

teaching, 189-193. 
Mann, Horace, report on Prussian teaching, 175. 
Manner in prayer, 119; manner in teaching should be varied, 202. 
McCosh, his position in regard to ecclesiastical supervision of Sunday-schools, 

3i7- 

Meditation, needed as a preparation for reading the Scripture, 112. 

Meeting, teachers' weekly, 265. 

Memory, Scripture to be memorized, 146-167 ; the memory especially to be 
cultivated in Sunday-school, 152 ; teachers should commit the verses, 212 ; 
how to get the scholars to commit to memory, 237. 

3£ethods wear out, 200. 

Methodists, their position in regard to Sunday-schools, 315. 

Minister 9 his relation to the Sunday-school, 318. 

Mission worU of the Sunday-school, 21 ; more than missionaries needed, 23 ; 
the Sunday-school a missionary agency, 29 ; missionaries for pioneer re- 
gions, 30 ; the missionary work of the American Sunday-School Union, 31 ; 
mission work everywhere, 31 ; mission work to be done by church schools, 
32 ; missionary collections, 97. 

3Iorristoivn, N. J., programme of Institute held there, 261. 

Music in Sunday-school, 340 ; improvements in Sunday-school music, 401. 

New scholars, how to be disposed of, 77 ; new school, how to start one, 385. 

Newell, report on normal school teaching, 174. 

Newton, Dr., referred to, 104. 

Noise, how to avoid it, 55 ; sources of noise, 81. 

Normal Institutes should be got up by the pastors of the place acting in 

concert, 296 ; the teachers' weekly meeting should be a normal class, 270. 
Notices, rules to be observed in regard to them, 101. 
Numbering books, 313. 

Objects of the Sunday-school, 13-33 > fi rs t object the conversion of the schol- 
ars, 14; building up the young converts in holiness, 15-20; second object, 
a mission agency for the unevangelized, 21-33. 

Opening school punctually, 99. 

Order, difficulty of maintaining it in Sunday-school, 79 ; doing things quietly, 
80 ; doing things at the right time, 83 ; keeping things and persons in place, 
84 ; order popular with the scholars, 91 ; the teacher should aim to keep 
order, 139 ; how it is to be done, 140, 141. 

Organization of the Sunday-school, 34 ; the Sunday-school not an inde- 
pendent concern, but a branch of the operations of the church, 35, 36 ; ap- 
pointment of superintendent, 37 ; other officers, 40. 

Out, going out rarely to be allowed, 85. 



INDEX. 41 1 

Paper, a teachers' paper needed by every Sunday-school teacher, 239. 

Parallel texts, how to use them, 215. 

Parents, their relation to the Sunday-school, 324. 

Pastors should concert together in getting up a Normal Institute, 246 ; rela- 
tion of the pastor to the Sunday-school, 318. 

Pause before and after prayer, 120. 

Penalties, the ordinary school penalties unknown in Sunday-school, 150. 

Personal influence to be exercised by the superintendent, 57. 

Piety the first qualification of the superintendent, 51, 52. 

Place, things and persons to be kept in place, 84. 

Power to be exercised in Sunday-school when necessary, but no show of it, 89. 

Prayer, rules for the opening prayer in Sunday-school, 115; an example, 116; 
another example, 118. 

Practical thoughts to be prepared, 219. 

Preparation for the opening service, 100 ; preparation for the lesson by the 
scholar, 180 ; preparation by the teacher, 210-220. 

Presbyterians, their action on Sunday-schools, 315-318. 

Programme, importance of having one, 93 ; should be supreme, 94 ; a test 
of the superintendent's idea of what the school is, 94 ; allotment of time, 
95-97 ; sample programme, 98 ; programme of Teachers' Institute, 260-264. 

Progress in the Sunday-school cause, signs of it, 396. 

Punctuality in opening, 99, 100. 

Question-boohs, their true use, 162, 173, 180, 215. 
Question drawer, its use at Institutes, 258. 
Questioning a class, 157-165. 
Quietly, doing things quietly, 80. 

Heading hymns and Scripture, 107-115. 

Heading committee for selecting library books, 279. 

Recitation, how to conduct it, 165-171. 

"References, how to be used, 167. 

Register number, 301 ; library Register, 306. 

Religious teaching best effected, like other teaching, by means of schools, 

18 ; more practical than ordinary teaching, 150. 
Richards, how he reached the understanding of an idiot, 196. 
Robert Raikes, his mistake, 397. 

Salvation of the scholar the great end of the teacher, 14-20; 124-131. 

Scholars to be kept busy, 169, 184-189 ; to do most of the talking, 170 ; gain- 
ing their affections, 189-193 ; reaching their comprehension, 193-195 ; get- 
ting them to learn the lesson, 221 ; treatment of new scholars, 368 ; absen- 
teeism, how to be remedied, 374 ; duty of visiting them, 375-379. 

Schools needed for religious teaching as much as for other teaching, 19. 



412 INDEX. 

/Scriptures, mode of reading them in school, 108 ; formality to be avoided, 
109; earnestness, no; previous study required, in; meditation on the 
passage, 112; alternate reading, 114; to be committed to memory, 146, 167. 

Seat, scholars not to be allowed to leave their seats, 85. 

Secretary, his appointment and duties, 40. 

Size, scholars', 74 ; how far to be considered in classifying scholars, 72. 

Shipping about in reciting, 168. 

Social condition, how far to be considered in classifying scholars, 74. 

Sjiirit, Holy, his help needed by the teacher, 125 ; how to be obtained, 127; 
the Great Teacher, 131; his influence a great mystery, 133; seeking his 
aid, 220. 

Spy, superintendent should not play the spy, 62. 

Squeak-leather not wanted in the superintendent's boots, 82. 

State Conventions should be union, not denominational, 248. 

Study needed as a preparation for reading the Scriptures in opening school, 
110-112; study of lesson by the scholars, 136; critical study of the mean- 
ing, 217. 

Summer, closing schools in summer, 359 ; what is to be done in the summer 
months, 361. 

Sunday-school, its objects, 13-33 '> f> rst object, the conversion and sanctifica- 
tion of its scholars, 14-20 ; second object, a means of Christianizing the 
masses, 21-33 • organization, 34-47 ; not an independent institution, but a 
department of the church's work, 34-36 ; appointment of its superintendent, 
37 ; of its other officers, 40 ; appointment of teachers, 43 ; qualifications of 
superintendent, 48-123; earnest piety, 50; executive ability, 52; things not 
wanted, 54 ; personal influence, 57 ; knowledge of the school, 61 ; and of 
the lesson, 64 ; bestowing attention upon all, 65 ; sympathy with all, 67 ; 
classification, 69 ; maintaining order, 78 ; exercising government, 87 ; mak- 
ing a programme, 93 ; punctuality in opening, 99 ; preparation for the open- 
ing, 100 ; giving out notices in school, 101 ; reading the hymn. 103 ; read- 
ing the Scriptures, 108 ; the opening prayer, 115 ; two examples of prayer, 
117, 118 ; the teacher, first qualification, 124; winning souls, 128; help from 
the Great Teacher, 131 ; having an aim, 136 ; difference between teaching in 
Sunday-school and in other schools, 149; class teaching, 153 ; how to ques- 
tion a class, 157 ; how to conduct a recitation, 165 ; teaching out of book, 
171 ; holding the attention, 177 ; keeping scholars busy, 184 ; gaining their af- 
fections, 189; reaching their comprehension, 193; variety in teaching, 199; 
having a definite lesson, 206 ; the teacher's preparation for the lesson, 210; 
getting the scholars to learn the lesson, 221 ; securing acquaintance with 
the general contents of Scripture, 226 ; irregular attendance of teachers, 
230 ; visiting scholars, 233 ; keeping up with the times, 237 ; necessity of 
teachers meeting in council, 244 ; State Conventions, 248 ; County Con- 
ventions, 252 ; County Institutes, 257 ; weekly meetings, 265 ; the library, 
how to select it, 273-297 ; how to manage the library, 297-309 ; relation of 



INDEX. 413 

the Sunday-school to the church, 310; relation to the minister, 318; to the 
parents, 324; attendance of the scholars upon church, 328; school accom- 
modations, 335 ; Sunday-school music, 340 ; anniversaries, 346 ; closing 
• school in winter, 355 ; closing in summer, 359 ; after vacation, 365 ; treat- 
ment of new scholars, 368 ; absenteeism, 374 ; uniform lessons, 379 ; how 
to start a new school, 385 ; is the Sunday-school cause making progress ? 
396 ; evidences of progress, 398. 

Superintendent should be appointed by the church, not elected by the 
teachers, 37-40 ; superintendent should select the secretary, librarian, chor- 
ister and teachers, and displace them when necessary, 40-45 ; importance 
of the office, 48, 49 ; example of incapacity, 49 ; earnest piety the first qual- 
ification, 50 ; executive ability, 52, 53 ; should not be fussy, 54 ; nor fretful, 
54 ; nor noisy, 55 ; nor a great talker, 56 ; personal influence, 57 ; should 
put forth his sympathies, 58, 59 ; should awaken his sympathies by making 
himself acquainted with the condition of the scholars, 60; should know 
what is going on in his school, 61 ; should know the lesson, 64 ; should be- 
stow attention on all, 66, 67 ; should bestow his sympathies upon all, 68 ; 
classifying the school, 69 ; difficulty of classifying, 70 ; age as a ground for 
classification, 71; size, 72; social condition, 74; intellectual progress, 75; 
individual peculiarities, 76 ; maintaining order, 78 ; doing things quietly, 80; 
doing things at the right time, 83 ; keeping things and people in place, 84 ; 
exercising government, 87 ; making a programme, 93 ; opening school punc- 
tually, 99 ; preparation for the opening service, 100 ; giving out notices in 
school, 101 ; giving out the hymn, 103 ; reading the Scriptures. 108 ; making 
the opening prayer, 115; manner in prayer, 119 ; pausing before and after 
prayer, 120. 

Support of Sunday-schools entirely inadequate, 19 ; compared with the sup- 
port of the secular schools, 20. 

Sympathy a power in the superintendent^ 58; should be bestowed upon 
all, 67. 

Talkative superintendent a nuisance, 56. 

Teachers to be appointed by the superintendent, 43-46 ; inconvenience of any 
other mode of selection or displacement, 44 ; teachers not to be interrupted 
while giving their lesson, 84 ; the amount to be guarded in the programme, 
95 ; first qualification of the teacher, 124 ; duty of winning souls, 128 ; seek- 
ing help from the Great Teacher, 131 ; having an aim, 136 ; securing reg- 
ular attendance, 138 ; securing the study of the lesson, 138 ; keeping order, 
139 ; teaching something, 142 ; teaching something additional every Sun- 
day, 143 ; teaching something to every scholar, 143 ; making the teaching 
scriptural, 145; getting the. scholars to commit Scripture to memory, 146; 
aiming to secure the conversion of scholars, 147 ; difference between teach- 
ing in Sunday-school and in other schools, 149 ; class teaching, 153; how to 
question a class, 157; how to conduct a recitation, 165; teaching out of 
35* 



414 INDEX. 

book, 171; holding the attention, 177; keeping the scholars busy, 184; 
gaining their affections, 189; reaching their comprehension, 193; studying 
variety, 199 ; assigning a definite lesson, 206; preparing for the lesson, 210; 
committing the verses to memory, 212 ; plan in regard to the parallel texts, 
215; use of the question-book, 215; preparing illustrations, 217; critical 
study of the meaning, 217; beginning preparation early in the week, 220; 
how to get the scholars to learn the lesson, 221 ; acquaintance with the gen- 
eral contents of Scripture, 226; irregular attendance of teachers, 230; visit- 
ing scholars, 232 ; keeping up with the times, 237 ; taking a teachers' 
paper, 239 ; having a teachers' library, 241 ; attending conventions, 241 ; 
necessity of meeting in council, 244; State Conventions, 248; County Con- 
ventions, 252; County Institutes, 257; Institute programmes, 260; weekly 
meetings, 265 ; teacher should provide for his class in summer before leav- 
ing the city, 363. 

Text-booh, how to be used in teaching, 171-1 77. 

Theological Seminaries should educate their students in a knowledge of 
the Sunday-school work, 245. 

Time, doing things in time, 83; apportionment of time to the different parts of 
the services, 94-98. 

Todd, his skill in illustration. 204. 

Topics in teaching should be varied, 203 

Uniform lessons, 379. 

Vacation, important work to be done in September, 365. 
Variety important in teaching, 199-209. 
Verses to be recited from memory, 166, 212. 
Visiting scholars. 233, 375~379- 

Wellington, Duke of Wellington's mode of intimidating a mob, 89. 

Winning souls the great end of the teacher, 128. 

Winter, closing schools in winter, 355. 

Worh, the work of Christians to Christianize the world, 17. 



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